Call me Betty Crocker
Gina. Bahia, Ecuador
Since we’ve been in Bahia we’ve had a kitchen at our disposal and tons of wonderful fruits and vegetables. We’ve been trying to take turns making communal meals (everyone pitches in $10 at the beginning of the weak for group food and for the giant jugs of drinking water we get) and so I’ve been experimenting with different things. One thing I noticed right away is that while there’s a really good, small grocery store nearby that has a lot of good things that you wouldn’t expect there’s still some gaps in what we’re used to and some things are just really expensive. Olive oil, for example, is ridiculously expensive. And ice cream is also pretty expensive (but the mora—like a blackberry—ice cream at the ice cream place down the street is really good. Really good). The cookies here are mediocre. Even though there are tons of bakeries around, their sweet stuff is kind of weird and not very tasty. So I decided I wanted to make some cookies, but oil is expensive and I didn’t want to use a ton of butter, so I wanted to use apple sauce. But there’s no apple sauce in Bahia. But there are tons of apples. So Sunday I bought a bunch of apples and made apple sauce, from scratch, from a recipe I found on the internet. And it was really tasty and really easy. If only I’d known before how stupidly easy it is to make applesauce (you literally just cut them up and boil the in about an inch of water until they’re soft, then I blended them. Done). And I used my homemade applesauce to make homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.
For one of our group dinners I had a craving for pizza but cheese here is really expensive (unless you get the fresh cheese that they make which I find a little strange, and I’m worried it’s going to get me sick again). So I made pizza dough (from scratch, also pretty easy) and then put a tomato sauce on it (also from scratch) and tons of eggplant, peppers, onions, and zucchini. It was really tasty and other than waiting for the dough to rise, didn’t take much actual preparation time. I’ve also boiled a whole chicken and used some of the meat for barbeque sandwiches and I’m going to use the rest of the meat, the bones, and the stock to make soup.
I’ve really started liking to cook since I’ve moved out to California, but not quite as from scratch as I’ve been doing here. It’s really fun. I enjoy cooking. I spent all day Sunday making food and reading while stuff cooked or cooled or in between meals. It was a great day. I want to learn how to can things when I get back to the States. Another thing to add to my list of things I want to do or learn when we get back. It’d be great to take all of the yummy produce in California and make applesauce, apple butter (I really love apple butter but have no idea how it’s made—other than in a big black cauldron like at the craft fairs we’d go to when I was little), jams, tomato sauce, and who knows what else! It sounds ridiculously fun which seems weird to me. But I’ve always loved eating good food, so I guess it’s good that I’m starting to love making it as well.
Tags: Bahia, Ecuador, Planet Drum
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