let's get cooking

While here in El Salvador, I have become a permanent fixture in the kitchen. This is not because I feel the need to experience the joys of cooking, but because it was part of the job assignment. However, my mother would be very proud if she knew the level of Martha-Stewartiness to which I have been exposed. We hardly eat anything that we haven’t grown, and this makes me realize how much work actually goes into something as simple as granola. Back in the day, my mother made granola out of sliced almonds, oatmeal, and the like--all things that could be bought at the store in handy little bags, ready for assembly in my mother’s kitchen. I heard a rumor that here we have granola on Sabbath mornings, but I had forgotten about it after we had swirls of bread that loosely resembled cinnamon rolls for the first Sabbath’s breakfast. But then, during the morning work time one day, I was given a bowl full of roasted peanuts and told to skin them all. (It was then that I realized why I had been craving Pad Thai the night before, but that’s another story.) It turned out not to be so bad as I had originally thought, and when it came to crushing them all, I had a feeling of satisfaction, knowing that the crushing of the peanuts was their final destination as well as my final job for the day.
During my time in the kitchen, I have come to appreciate the kitchen workers of Big Lake Youth Camp all the more. There are days when I am the unofficially-designated Dish Girl and I moan inwardly when I see the same bowl or cutting-board come around for the fifth time that morning. (This morning I washed the same bowl twice because it had “a bad smell.” The bowl was metal. How could it have a bad smell? At least they gave me some bleach to wash it with the second time and I enjoyed the smell of germs dying, so I washed my water bottle as well.) Then there are other days (which are more frequent) when I am simply the veggie-chopper. My “specialty” has become the rice dish we eat for every lunch—3 carrots, 1 onion, and 2 or 3 bell peppers. The carrots are to be shredded, while the other two ingredients are to be diced. One evil morning when the kitchen was out to get me, the cheese-grater decided it had had enough of carrots and potatoes, so why not eat me instead? In the end I had three bloody fingers and was very happy for the water-proof Winnie-the-Pooh bandages my mother had sent with me. But back to the rice: When I am preparing the rice dish, I may or may not have to sort the rice as well. In the beginning, sorting eight cups of rice took me two and a half hours. Luckily, about half-way through the sorting process, Scott (the male missionary in our house) walked by and asked if I wanted to borrow his CD player. A light turned on in my head and I remembered—iPod. So I ran to get mine and spend the next hour or so listening to Adventures in Odyssey. The second time sorting took me over two hours as well and I was kept company by the tunes from the Broadway musical “Annie” (only realizing the irony of me listening to songs about an orphanage while I’m actually in an orphanage by the third song) and the songs of the Beach Boys. However, the third and fourth times I’ve sorted rice have each taken me less than an hour, so I am definitely improving.