Food Post2

As I said…food!  My previous cooking post seems to be the one that creates the most felicity and positive comments among my readers (doesn’t that sound silly?  My readers…ehhh hennhh hennnhh!  All posts from now one will begin with “Gentle Readers.”  You know, except not) and so this post will attempt to recapture that glory.

Brief aside – if you check the comments on that previous post, you’ll see that a representative from the Peace Corps Cookbook recently reached out to me for assistance!  Yeah.  Uh huh!  I’m kinda like a big deal!  Am I that high on the google search return?  Anyway, I’ve taken the intelligent step of forwarding them to a different Volunteer who can actually…you know…cook.  Especially local dishes, which is what they want anyway. 

Anyway, gentle readers, let us return to the subject at hand.  The delightful meal I delighted myself with earlier this week.  I call it…darn I can’t think of anything clever.  Love Fruit Stew?  Sappy.  Tomato Stew?  Unimaginative.  Intergalactic Red Chunky Soup?  I guess it wins by default.

So, like most of my cooking, I didn’t exactly set out with a plan to make IRCS…it just kinda happened.  I don’t make soups or stews that often at all really, but sometimes the overwhelming urge to just throw things in a pot hits me and…well the results can be intergalactically good!

As I let my hands browse through my buckets, stacks, and piles (the equivalent of cupboards in my life here), I realized that all of the things I was picking had a certain significance, though.  And that is how we arrived at this post!  So it's food - with a purpose!

IRCS is, at its base, a chunky tomato based curry.  I trace that basic concept to two people I love very much.  First, my sister Cara!  Cara provided me curry powder and many other wonderful spices.  And even notes about usages to make them less scary!  Unfortunately, I was still kinda scared (and lazy!) so until Ariel showed up (the second person!(not a complete list)) I hadn’t really started to tap that wealth.  But Ariel showed me how easy it was!  Apparently, to use curry powder properly requires a spoon!  And stirring!  You can see why I was nervous to start by myself.

Ariel also contributed the idea of using tomatoes (in this case canned, not ideal, but I’m not perfect) to make things more awesome.   Rice and lentils – good.  Rice, lentils, and some stewed tomatoes – amazing!  

Thanks, Ariel!  You know, for at lot of stuff.  But cooking with tomatoes is one!

The next part goes to my friends here in Pikin Slee who helped me plant my garden, because, remember, IRCS is a CHUNKY tomato based curry.  I don’t just mean stewed tomato chunks, I mean chunks!  Did you say chunks?  I SAID CHUNKS!

To provide some chunks I used…HOME GROWN EGGPLANT!  The green leafys are Tajawi and they cook kinda like spinach – good for you, tasty, and good to thicken something up or whatever – but THEY ARE NOT CHUNKS!  So you need the eggplant too!

For those of you following along at home, remember that you have to cut up the eggplant and Tajawi before you throw it into IRCS.  I like big chunks too, but we want lazy big chunks (who wants to make a million tiny slices?  Not me, that’s for sure!)  not crazy big chunks!  Crazy big would be like if you didn’t cut up the greens at all.  Yeah – it’s not recommended.  Did actually try it once...or twice.  Once might have been coincidence.

So soaking the eggplant and ‘wi and then cutting it up is your first step.  Well, actually picking it is.  Well, actually planting it I guess.  Clearing the ground?  Finding a hoe??  Being born???  Where does it end?!!!  Right here – just cut it up.  Don’t cut yourself!  Let’s just call this the beginning of PHASE ONE!

After that, toss it in your big pot (I’m assuming you just have the one, like me!) with a little oil, a little water, and a little salt.  My eggplant has seemed a bit bitter recently (I have no idea why.  Do you?) and so I’ve been cooking it a bit crispier.  That means I let it fry a bit more and steam a bit less.  So a bit more oil and bit less water and I leave it uncovered.  Saramaccans also tell you that cooking something uncovered lets the bitterness escape.  I don’t know if that’s true, but it is interesting!

While that is doing its thing on the stove (don’t forget to turn the gas on!  And light it!), go root around and find your can of tomatoes.  If you have real tomatoes and want to stew them first or something, good for you fancy pants.  If you’re like me, go find your can.  If you are really like me, you may not have the best organizational system so there may be some rooting around and some dust and stuff like that…so that gives the vegetables a minute to wiggle around and cook down a bit. 

Then go to your protein bucket (if you don’t have one, you should.  Protein is important!  Duh!) and whip out your good ol’ textured vegetable protein.  Thanks here goes to Ariel – Thanks, Ariel! - who introduced me to any number of non-meat proteins.  Not that I would have been scared of these slightly dog-food looking bits otherwise…but I probably won’t have cooked with them!  And thanks to Peace Corps Medical Officer, Doc, for making sure we knew where to buy them in Suriname!

Now you can do your TVP any number of different ways, but this time I’m guying to toss it right in with the veggies – are they cousins?  Is that mean? – and let it steam/fry/marinate/whatever.  It will certainly get done enough and it becomes just another…CHUNK in the INTERGALACTIC CHUNKY TOMATO SOUP. Toss in a healthy handful and stir.

At this point, it’s time to really start stirring things in.  I’m extremely good at that, which may explain why my cooking over-emphasizes this technique.  When food doesn’t quite taste right, I generally answer by adding another different spice or ingredient.  When in doubt, I’ve been known to just throw Barbeque Sauce (it’s capitalized because it’s great) on something and stir until it became edible.  So when I say good at “stirring things in”…well I guess it depends on your definition of good.  Anyway.

Here’s the devil’s row for this dish.  Oil and salt already happened (not too much, let’s be healthy please!).  Soy Sauce because I LOVE YOU MOM.  Siracha (sp?) because it’s great and a little spice is awesome.  Listerine is for later and just completely ignore the other stuff.  Oh, and I think I forgot to take a picture of Ketjap Mannis – it’s kinda like a sweet soy sauce…idk.  I threw in a spoonful because I thought it might also help reduce the slight bitterness of the eggplant.

So stir in all of that or whatever and by then phase one should be pretty much complete.  TVP is done enough and well flavored, vegetables are cooked down but still chunky, and hunger is mounting so it’s time to hit…

PHASE TWO

To be meal, food need 3 thing.  Protein.  Starch.  Vegetable.  Me keep things simple.  Me not gourmet, gentle reader (mispronounce when you read, please). 

So you could say that this food is already pretty close to meal status.  Still needs starch, but whatever.  Much bigger whatever is that it is still WAY FAR AWAY from being INTERGALACTIC RED CHUNKY SOUP.  It’s getting intergalactic and it’s got chunks, but where is the RED and the SOUP you might ask?

It’d be silly to ask because I already told you to get your can of tomatoes.  Seriously.

Now it’s time to crack that bad boy open an pour ‘er on.  And here we get another shout out for Mom.  About three years ago I had an interesting conversation with an older, married coworker of mine and we recognized that one of the most important changes in a man’s life is when the Woman of the House, in whatever sense that means whatever it means, changes from Mom to someone else.  We aren’t going to follow that thread anywhere right now, we are just going to agree that Moms are pretty important.

And my Mom gave me possibly my most important tool that I have out here!  My smile?  Maybe, but I’m talking about my CAN OPENER!

Dude, it’s key.  I don’t eat canned food super often out here, but it’s still about a million times more often than I did in the States.  And given that that is true for most people around here, you’d think they’d have good can openers.  WRONG.  You can barely find one in this country.  So my momma sent me one from home and let me say - Thank you, Momma!

Also, you might notice there is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure on that hook also.  Thanks for that go to Gordon and Harrison I think.  Thanks guys!

So, presuming that any of our gentle readers following along at home also have a mom who loves them, whip out your can opener and your smile and get it going!  If you don’t have both of those, you should have thought about it sooner – by the time you get that can open with your knife, those lovely chunky bits might burn!  Hurry up!

So pour in the tomatoes and then let it all do that magical thing called simmering.  Simmering is key.  I’ve heard.  Admittedly, I mostly just use it to get all the water out of my pasta so I don’t have to drain it…but I’m kinda lackadaisical.  I learned that word from my 6^th grade soccer coach!  Also, no pasta involved here.

Once you have simmered suitably (I don’t know what that means.  Ask someone who is a better cook) it’s time for the final piece of meal.  Starch!  Here, again, my momma gets a Thank you! for providing me with an alternative starch approach.  Couscous!

Couscous is wonderful and has the advantage of kinda cooking instantly – so I didn’t have to use another pot to cook rice or something separately and I could just (say it with me if you want!) STIR IT IN!

I just used all of the box that was left, but I don’t recommend that for you at home.  You should probably measure or something – there might be more left in your box than there was in mine.  And, yes, if you were very sneaky you might have noticed it amounted to about half of a blue cup in that picture of Devil’s Row that I put somewhere above.  Did you scroll back?  Admit it! Do you have a blue cup?  I guess you’ll have to figure something out if you want your IRCS to be like mine!  And mine was tasty, so you do.  Trust me.

So toss it in, stir it up, let the whole thing hit a boil again and then cover it, turn it off, and don’t forget to turn off the gas too!

Give it a while, and then take a look.  If you did it right, it should look something like this!

Spoon it up and sit down to enjoy!  And thank you to my friends from Pikin Slee that made the table where I get to sit to eat it!  Maybe a good book from friends – Thanks Mom!  Thanks Saffers! – and you have yourself the real meal they call dinner!

And if you made your IRCS right, don’t you worry.  You’ll be a member of the clean plate club without a doubt.  Thanks for reading!

And thank you to all of you that made this meal possible!  Whether you got a specific shout out for the food part or generally made it possible through being a positive part of my life, you have my gratitude for all your love and support – past, present, future.  Thanks!  Later!

So, wow.  I’ve been here for a year.  It’s a long time and made longer by the fact that I am not yet closer to the other side – a year away from home, but not yet a year as a full-fledged Peace Corps Volunteer.  In any case, it’s been a good year.  Not easy, but generally life isn’t and it isn’t that much fun if it is easy at all times.  I’ve learned a lot and grown (stuff besides fungus and vegetables, too!) and those can be painful processes.  But as Master Jeon has been known to say, there is good pain, bad pain, and crazy pain. 

In this first year here, there’s been some of each of the first two and fortunately none of the last!  But without a doubt pain has not been the primary feeling out here.  This is great.  It is not perfect, but it is great.  I live in a world that I help to enrich, palpably, just about every single day.  And it is a world so different and beautiful and vibrant that it defies description.   Not always comfortably so, but I didn’t come out here looking for comfort.  Those are very good things to be part of – things that are deeply enriching for me as well.

So, a year in, I’m glad to be here.  But man do I miss the people and activities that make America home.  Thanksgiving, Passover, Ariel’s black belt test and the TKD Semi at Cornell right now (Yay!  Go Ariel!), her 21^st birthday, two weddings, two babies (well that’s looking ahead…) and who knows how much other stuff.  It’s a daunting list and those are things I’ll never get back.  But you can’t go through life focusing on the opportunity cost of doing something big and dynamic and different.  So I’m sad to miss those things.  It’s really tough to not be a part of some many things and lives that I love.  But this right now is too important part of my life to regret it – I’m having a great time and knowing what I gave up to have it just helps me get that much more out of the experience.

But giving up stuff is never easy and so thank you to everyone that has helped me.  Everytime somebody thinks of me – with an email or a text or a message or a letter or a package or a visit! or even just a mention somewhere – it makes me feel good and like I’m still a part of everything that is important to me back home.  I’m not out here to leave anything behind.  So much of it I’m desperately trying not to!  I am out here trying to add something meaningful and new to what I have.  And, I have to say, it’s working – through no small part thanks to you!  Just reading and thinking about me helps, too J

Positive life changing events aren’t always easy to find and I’ve been pretty lucky to date.  So I do not feel sorry for myself that I am having to work hard for this one.  Hard is hard, of course, but I guess all of the above boils down to the fact that, at this moment, it feels worth it.

But some days are tougher than others, that’s for sure!  And when they are, I dive into some of the things that remind me of home and the people and things I know and love and it helps.  Economists from Andy, chocolate from various Saffers and Delahanty’s (or sisters formerly known as Delahanty!), home decorations from said sisters – stuff like that.   So thank you again, for that stuff and the many other messages and post cards and all of it.  It is great and I appreciate it!

Of course, there is one other thing I miss tremendously that is almost impossible to answer while living as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  Food!  Oh man I miss some of the food!  You all know that and it doesn’t help that I am a somewhat…lazy and sub-par cook.   I could do more to rectify my pain on that front than I do, admittedly.  Ooh!  Thanksgiving loaf!  Thanks, Cara!

But anyway, this week I cooked a meal that kinda captures all the stuff I’m talking about in this post.  Building on the past and the love, support, and wisdom of my friends and family and the things I am gaining here to make something in and of my life that is better than either by itself.  And so, you will find, in the next post, a description of that!  In a slightly different, tone J