I came home from our October trip to Morocco with a suitcase full of nuts, preserved lemons, dried fruit, and five kinds of olives. Since then I’ve been working on my Moroccan cooking skills. I make a mean tagine, if I do say so myself.

One of the things I like most about tagine is that you cook it on the stovetop as opposed to the oven. That means you can make it without electricity, like I did a couple of nights ago when we had company over for dinner and the power went out. We’re cooking with gas, oh yeah (albeit in the dark).

Electricity may be less of an issue for us very soon. Yesterday when I got home from work I found this shiny new item in the driveway:

A powerful generator! Thank you, ICS! When it’s hooked up, this baby will be able to run the whole house – lights and oven included.