bachelorette chef extraordinaire (19th of Feb)

"Hey, you went to school in the Valley," I say to my closest Peace Corps neighbor who is sitting on my mat in the heat of my house during a brief visit on his way back home. "I know it's kind of a downer to talk about food that we can't have, but you know what I've been really craving lately? A burrito from..."
"...Bueno y Sano?" he asked.

...uhh, YEAH.

We determined that it would be completely possible to have one sent over here if the sender was willing to pack it in dry ice and that even if things went wrong and it got here gross, we'd be no worse off than we are now, not eating Bueno y Sano.

However, I was duly inspired this evening to try my hand at as Mexican a dish as I could create with the contents of my kitchen shelves.


First I took the rest of the tomatos that I had, which amounted to three, and chopped them up along with a small onion, half a clove of garlic, and a bit of piment (probably habenero pepper, but I'm not completely sure). I put this in a small bowl and added salt, cumin seeds that I'd crushed, powdered cumin and cilantro. Yum.

Originally I sliced up half a thin loaf of village bread to fry into really greasy crispy toast to serve as makeshift chips for this salsa concoction of mine. Appetizer.

Scoop rice out of my plastic canister a bit at a time, check for rocks and bugs, dump in water, rinse the yucky rice powder residue off, add fresh water, cook. Simple.

Now, tortillas...using the easiest recipie in our "Where There Is No Microwave" cookbook, which entails water oil and flour. How hard can that be, right? Let me tell you, it is a pain in the butt striking the right balance between "pliable" and "non-sticky." I think the cookbook assumes that we're going to mess up and/or improvise anyway, so pretty much everything is generalized and vague.

Flour, oil, salt, warmed water little by little. Gooey balls of mush, roll roll roll. Sticky flour dough covered hands, counter, and improvised salt canister rolling pin, flour all over my cutting board sheet, utensils, spice packets, cell phone, pagne and probably face. Stick sticky flour balls into flour container, smush more flour in bit by bit, understand the fine line between sticky and pliable. First tortilla fat...impatient...plop, into the frying pan to warm.

Oh no, the rice! Checked just in time. Turn burner off with gooey hands, move pot to the back of the stove, mismatched lid and all. Back to tortillas. Flour flour flour. I roll out three, each one better than its predecessor, then lump the remaining balls into one big clump and stick it in my flour container, to be worried about at a later date.

Juicy salsa juice...maybe it'll taste like Bueno. Tiny can of tomato paste that takes three tries to open with my can opener (what is with these things?) plus water plus garlic plus piment. Stir it up, taste it, add salt...and more salt...and more salt...and some powdered piment...and you know what, it doesn't taste too bad. And it is SPICY. Good.

The two thinnest tortillas I made turned out ok cooking in the pan...a little on the crunchy side. I break up the fattest one into pieces and try to make them crispy, like chips.

Add some spices to my neglected rice to try and give it some flavor...same Mexican type spices...cumin, cilantro, piment, salt...hmm...ah well.

And that's what I've got. Sort of crunchy tortillas with seasoned white rice, pico de gallo, and juicy tomato salsa stuff. I decided to forego the Vacche Qui Rit because I'm running low on wedges and really I've eaten a ton of that stuff recently. Gotta pace myself with the one cheese product I have at my disposal here. FOOOOD. Didn't exactly hit the same spot as a Bueno burrito but it was what it was and it wasn't so bad. It was pretty good actually. I'm a pretty good improvisational cook.

Since we're on the subject of food, lemme tell you about my favorite thing to make for myself recently. Sautee eggplant and grill a loaf of village bread (small lil breads) which you've sliced into halves in a bit of oil (already used for fry-frying purposes). Spread a wedge of Vac Qui Rit (Laughing Cow chesse, available at your local supermarket maybe) on one half of the bread, add sliced of tomato on top, sprinkle salt and piment and basil on top of the tomato, add slices of onion and you have got yourself the best sandwich ever. Lunch ramba. I never knew I'd move to Burkina Faso and a) see so much eggplant, or b) start to love eggplant. My favorite marche lady loads me up with eggplant cadeaux whenever I buy things from her because she can see in my eyes how much I loooovveeee itttttt.


Yum. Yum yum yum.
Ok...but now I must get ready to go to sleep. It is rather lateish here, being 10:30pm and all. I have yet to bathe, which is odd...so I will fill up a pitcher of drinking water to last me through the hot hot night and then get myself all bathed and jump into bed and try to fall asleep before I completely dry off. Good luck.