Ben, Do you and Bob always throw parties together? What a nice way to shrink Houston. I didn't really want to come to Houston, but when I learned that your wife is from Germany, I decided to make the sacrifice. (I can't believe I actually SAID that... must be Edie's fruit talking.) Your deep fried turkey smells.... Well, it just smells. (Now I KNOW that's Edie's fruit!) 'Woodsy' is the word I was looking for. Your turkey smells woodsy. But where I was brought up, we always reserved Forest Spice for the male members of our HUMAN family. For after shaving. Did this turkey shave?!? But seriously, I'd love some of the dark meat, please. And another round of raspberry iced tea? I'm looking for a recipe for Bienenstich. As I recall, it is similar to cinnimon rolls. Could your wife help me out here? Vielen Dank! On the subject of travel, I've never been to Germany, though I have a German born uncle, Wolfgang. I took several years of German lang. in school, but remember little now, unfortunately. You know what they say: use it or lose it. My question is this: if that's true for language, etc., why isn't it also true for FAT? I haven't used all this fat for years, but I still have it. Goodness knows, I've TRIED to lose it. So what's up with that?! I lived and taught in the Marshall Islands for a couple of years in the 1980s. Our housing was on Majuro Atoll. We lived on Small Island, a name that was true. At high tide, a person with a strong arm could throw a rock from ocean side to lagoon side and make a splash. The main road was 35 miles long, period. I loved it, but a lot of people said the idea of being on such a small piece of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean made them nervous. I guess what I really loved was the people. Returning stateside was very traumatic for me; I cried daily for 5 months. The first time I went into a Fred Meyer store, I was so overwhelmed by the huge amount of stuff and the incredible variety with each category that I stood there and cried. I felt like I'd left my life behind. We moved back to a place we'd never lived and I still FELT in Marshallese culture. I was really between a rock and a hard place- not Marshallese, but not really a mainlander either. Reverse culture shock. It's hard to describe to someone who hasn't experienced it. I was able to travel to Kwajalein Island ('Paradise of the Pacific') and then 3 miles on to Ebeye ('Slum of the Pacific')- I still get furious about the outrageous disparity in living conditions. Kwaj was like a golf course and its groceries had fresh produce from the U.S. Ebeye, whose residents were employed at Kwaj, had empty shelves and a little rotting (yes, rotting) produce. It was over crowded and truly a slum. A water barge brought fresh water over from Kwaj every 2nd or 3rd day, as I recall. The good news is that Ebeye now has a water desalinization plant. I hope there have been other upgrades as well. I also traveled to the outer island of Mili. It was beautiful, with sand so white that at night you could didn't need a light to see the paths. I saw men weaving palm frond walls for a cabin. There were still many reminders of WW II there, not the least of which were the bomb craters. Some of them were put to good use growing taro. Because taro likes mucky soil, it was planted in the craters; when the tide came in, fresh water from underground was forced into the low spots. When the tide receded, the water seeped out, leaving the wet soil. One day as I walked along the ocean shore, I picked some beautiful 'hairy' looking pink flowers. I took them back and placed them on the table. Later, I saw that they'd been thrown out into the brush. I asked what happened to the flowers. I was told that those 'flowers' were poisonous and that they were used to poison fish with! Live and learn. :-) Well, hope I haven't kept you away from your other guests too long. I've sure enjoyed the visit! Got to make a quick trip up to Vicki's. Jill