Gras a agribusiness.

A friend recently pointed out that in the manner of saying grace, thanking God for food from the earth, it makes a certain sense to thank Agribusiness for meals that come straight from the chemistry lab.

Confession 1: I love cereal. It's my all-time comfort food.
Confession 2: I love cheap things...er, saving money.

So 1 + 2 =
Oh yes, we did, last Thursday night. It was a second-tier anniversary for us (the day we started dating, EIGHT years ago!), so we celebrated with cereal from Argentina. Pay Only for Taste indeed, since I think this cereal was nutritionally valueless. Hello, food desert in a box. Add a little soy milk, though...irresistible.

Saturday we atoned for our sins by making pasta from scratch:

Basic pasta, as it turns out, is the simplest recipe ever:

3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups flour
3/4 teaspoons salt

Mix, let rest 30 minutes, roll super-thin, cut into noodles, dry. To cook, boil for 5 minutes in lightly salted water. Can be stored for weeks. Easy peasy.

We embellished ours with greens from a local tire garden, tomatoes and garlic from the street market, and feta from...well, far away. Delicious. Recommended. I'm not sure if you actually save money by making pasta, but a sense of accomplishment is really one of the best seasonings you can use.

So, the lesson for this week is:
Celebrate humanity. Cook food.

It's a regular Food Week around here.

Tchaka!

I've been in Haiti for almost two years, but last week was the first time I ever had my new favorite Haitian food. Serve with a warm sourdough loaf, and wait for the rave reviews to pour in.

A note: this recipe might be for more advanced cooks, since everything is proportional (i.e., I was given no measurements) and therefore everything is to taste.

Haitian Tchaka
Prep time: maybe an hour?
Serves: flexible, but if there are only two of you you're likely to have leftovers.

Pressure cook red, butter, and black beans (choose two) until soft.

In a separate pot, boil chopped pumpkin, scallions/onions, cloves, and garlic together until pumpkin is soft. Puree.

Return spicy pumpkin puree to pot, and add chopped green peppers, carrots, potatoes, and corn* (it seems like you could really add any vegetables you have around). Cook until vegetables are soft.

Add cooked beans and salt and pepper. Let simmer until flavors are blended. Serve hot.

*Our cooks here use dried corn, which I would identify as popcorn. If you choose this route, add the corn to the beans and pressure cook until soft.

Enjoy!

Yumness you don't want to miss.

Last weekend we were invited up to MCC's guesthouse in Kenscoff (yes, our former home) for a tres delicious breakfast of homemade eggs benedict, garnished with edible flowers.


Pancha, Alexis, and Rachel did the heavy lifting in the kitchen, making irresistible piles of toasted croissants, sliced avocado and tomato, poached eggs, and homemade hollandaise sauce:


Bryan, Margot, Joel, and I were the most enthusiastic fan club ever:


Especially Margot*:

* although she would not, could not be convinced to taste even the tiniest nibble of nasturtium.

Since there's always a weekend a-comin', I have re-posted the recipe here for your brunching pleasure. The original can be found at Joel & Rachel's blog.

Egg Benedict with Yogurt Hollandaise Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

1 cup plain yogurt

3 egg yolks

Juice of 2 key limes (or 2 teaspoons of lemon or lime juice)

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon Dijon mustard

Ground pepper

Other ingredients

Poached eggs

Toasted bread (English muffins, croissants, Turkish bread, etc.)

A BUNCH of cooked bacon [I left this in as part of the original recipe, but avocado & tomato are much better...]

Beat together the egg yolks, yogurt, lemon/lime juice in a double boiler. Cook for about 15 minutes until sauce thickens. Keep stirring - it might become thinner then thicker, but just stay with it.

Remove from heat and add the salt, pepper and mustard and stir it in.

During all this I would start cooking the bacon or slicing the veggies. Then poach the eggs and the toast the bread.

Serve like this: Place a piece of toasted bread on bottom, then add veggies (you could also use wilted spinach or a favourite roasted veggie), then the poached egg, then pour the warm hollandaise sauce over everything. Enjoy!

A brief meditation on food.

Our days were elemental, filled with nothing but eating and cooking. A food-oriented existence, asking questions only about taste. Scratch that: asking questions about the experience, wondering about what it’s like to make yogurt, curry, bagels, ginger ale. Fruit cobblers. Tomato soup. Chutney. Whole wheat rolls.

Our days were like menus, unrolling special after special. Variety was the spice of the kitchen, a way to log the passing seasons. Inundated by eggplant. Mangoes a-go-go. The knives were sharpened and the cast-iron in constant use.

The way to our stomachs was through our mouths, past tongues that professed nutrition but chose always taste. We slurped and sampled, becoming ingredient snobs. We accept only the freshest, the shapeliest, the most local. We felt cheated when foods were not in our market, when tastes available to others were denied us.

We had never felt more body, working directly for caloric intake. No salary-middleman. Hours of our lives, sacrificed on the altar of continued existence. How much effort it takes, how much work, to produce one loaf of bread, one pot of soup.

(Check it out: a grad student in England is working her way through one of the classic Mennonite cookbooks. Even though Extending the Table is not exclusively vegetarian, there are enough good recipes to make it enjoyable and recommendable.)

After a mere 8 hours in the kitchen:

Yes We Can!
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Esther and I spent Saturday making leek potato soup and black bean vegetable soup, and this is our half of the bounty (okay, we did eat some over the weekend). You might be surprised to know that this was our first time canning anything - it's easier than you would think, fun, and a good way to not only save seasonal food for later but have a nice alternative to Ramen noodles on the I-don't-feel-like-cooking nights.

Another thing we CAN do: check out the cargo bike Bryan and Ben made!

Thanksgiving redux.

Well, although yesterday was not a Haitian holiday, Bryan and I did things up in style anyway:


Eggplant Parmesan! Edamame! Pie! Yum!


Since our suppers are usually one-pot wonders, we were both overstuffed after eating dinner and sampling this faux-apple pie made with a local vegefruit called meleton:


In lieu of sharing our table with anyone this year, Harvey and Reginald kept us company:

The meal was delicious and pushed us into Thanksgiving food comas, but the best part of the afternoon was being able to talk with family at home. Hi everyone! See you in a few weeks.

Confessions of a Hitherto Unknown Plasti-holic.

Well, there's nothing like hard data to destroy your self-image. Here I was, thinking that Bryan and I were doing a pretty good job of leading a plastic-free life - this might just be one of the few places in our hemisphere where it's almost harder to find packaged things than not - until I took stock of our week.

To wit, so far in June we have acquired:
- 4 toilet paper wrappers
- 3 plastic lids on cardboard packages
- 2 plastic bags (egregious. simply uncalled for.)
- 1 plastic bottle of Pepto Bismol (Haitian stomach-itis strikes again.)
- 1 soda bottle (ah, that Bryan.)
- 1 small bottle of travel shampoo (well, we stayed in a fancy hotel for our anniversary and it was just sitting there and it smelled so good.)
- 2 water bottles (also from the hotel.)
- 4 noodle wrappers
- The disposable plastic lid to our reusable plastic Culligan bottle
- 1 plastic gallon jug (although this one is technically a durable good, for buying milk.)

So, wow. It's been 9 days and I was sure we'd be 100% new-plastic-free. Piece of cake, right? Guess I learned a little something here.

Nevertheless, we renew our efforts and continue mostly undaunted...

Mango and Poison Ivy

Mango season has just begun here in Desarmes. The rest of the country seemingly has had them for quite awhile, but now here in the Artibonite Valley all the mango trees are giving us baskets and baskets of the sweet fruit. This week I was reminded of the Mango / Poison Ivy connection. Both plants are in the same family and both contain Urushiol, the chemical that makes your skin develop a rash. Well luckily this stuff is only in Mango skin and eating it poses no problem, but if you handle it and get some sap on your hands you just may develop a rash.

So as our first PSA, be sure to wash your hands after you cut up a mango and wash well between your fingers.

Happy mango eating!

Score one for hummus

We've been trying to cook as much as possible with food from the market here in Dezam, but this week we used four imported ingredients (tahini, olive oil, cracked wheat, and celery) to make a Middle Eastern feast. Hummus! Tabbouleh! Baba ghanoush! Yum.

The next evening, we took the leftovers from the MCC fridge for round two of deliciousness. Jean was still in the office, so we offered him a taste. "Sure, I'm used to foreign food." Brave man.

Halfway through his plate, we checked in. "What do you think?"

He pointed to the hummus. "This is really good. This is the first time I have ever understood how you could have tasty food without meat. These other things are good, but this is amazing."

Now if we can just get a crop of olives, sesame, celery, and wheat to thrive on our roof...

Thanksgiving.....in Haiti.

Sometimes you forget which holidays are American and which holidays are worldwide. Thanksgiving is an American holiday (in case you have forgotten - a few people asked us how they celebrate Thanksgiving in Haiti).

We've also made several assumptions about Christmas that turned out to be wrong (e.g., you don't work on Christmas). We almost lost Christmas this week - Sharon and I are supposed to go along on a teacher's outing to another part of Haiti, a trip originally scheduled for December 22-24. On Monday the environmental education team extended the trip to return the morning of the 25th. No one else seemed to mind, though we attempted to change the date:

Sharon: Is Christmas not a big holiday here?
Fritzner, one of our coworkers: Oh yes, it's very big.
Sharon: Then how is it possible to schedule work for that day?
Fritzner: Oh, it's no problem.
Sharon (referencing the biggest holiday in Haiti): So if we were scheduled to come back on December 31, and we extended one day...
Fritzner, chuckling: No, that's impossible. We couldn't do that. January 1 is a big holiday.

What could we do? We're trying to be culturally flexible, so we shrugged our shoulders and had a tinge of resentment as Christmas was canceled for us. But as we sat in our weekly team meeting and discussed the calender for December, our director raised his eyebrows as he heard the new date. He's scheduled to go on this outing as well, but (fortunately!) he's also planning to go to Christmas Eve Mass at 6pm on the 24th and needs to be back before Christmas Day. So, in short, he saved Christmas for us.

Back to Thanksgiving. We started assembling our Haitian vegetarian Thanksgiving menu a few days before the 27th. We went to the market and bought all that we needed: pumpkins, onions, potatoes, meloton, etc. Our menu consisted of pumpkin soup, freshly-baked rolls, green papaya salad, faux-apple pie (with the meloton), fresh pineapple, and fried plantains. Unfortunately, we were so busy cooking we forgot to take photos.

We had a few visitors from the upper echelons of MCC who are here taking a survey of Haiti's disaster management practices, and we were happy to share our dinner with them (there were even 2 other Americans in the group!). We also Skyped with Sharon's family, who were finally able to see us through the magic of a borrowed computer with a working camera. It still wasn't quite the same as being at home, especially because we were the only people in town celebrating and we worked a full day at the office and were all a bit tired, but it was worth the extra time in the kitchen.

This meal was also the unveiling of our new pressure cooker (!) which should help us stretch our tank of gas every month. One thing that I do find amusing is that we have 4 turkeys who live in the yard we share with our landlord. They are funny birds (although terrifying when perched at eye level and you are walking to the outhouse in the dark and don't see them until the last minute) and I laugh every time I see them walk past our door. Whenever people asked if we were going to eat turkey, I told them it wouldn't have been that difficult. As you might have guessed, there isn't yet a market for tofurkey here!

Before eating, we asked each person to name one thing for which they are thankful for this year. Though we are often frustrated with our life here, we found ourselves genuinely grateful for things like being able to eat food from the backyard (papayas, squash). For friends who are becoming good friends. For the chance to experience life in a culture so totally different from ours (who knew that the other side of the world is just off the coast of Florida?). For family and friends at home who are in our thoughts every day.

Well, I hope everyone in the U.S. had a great Thanksgiving (and Black Friday - get that economy going before we get back in 2011, ha ha).

Happy Holidays,

Bryan

Kore Pwodiksyon Lokal

Support local production!

KPL, one of MCC's partners, encourages Haitians to support the national economy by buying locally-made goods and locally-grown food.

KPL originally purchased airtime for this commercial on national television this past spring, and the TV station now supports the project by airing it for free several times a day. Filmed and directed by an MCCer, the actors are all people we met in Gwo Jean. Enjoy!

On food and eating

Since eating is such a major part of each day, I thought I'd devote a post to describing Haitian cuisine as we have known it so far.

Like many North Americans, Haitians eat three meals a day, which are called (in translation, of course) food, big food, and food. Breakfast, eaten between 6:00 and 8:30 am, has usually been one of the following:
-An egg sandwich
-Coffee and white bread
-Mangoes, avocados, and cassava bread
-Peanut butter and bread
-Spaghetti
(Why spaghetti? Why breakfast? Why eat it with mayonnaise and ketchup? I'll try to get to the bottom of this.)

Lunch ("gwo manje" or big food), served between 1:00 and 5:00 pm, is usually:
-Rice, bean sauce, avocado, and freshly-squeezed limeade
-Rice, meat sauce, avocado, and juice
-Rice, fish sauce, avocado, and juice
-Cornmeal with vegetables and a tomato-based sauce

On Sundays there's a special soup (also eaten on January 1, Haitian Independence Day), that is really delicious. I'm not sure exactly what is in it, but it tastes sort of like a creamy squash soup with onions and cabbage. It's super good.

Dinner ("soupe"), served anytime after 7:30 pm, could include:
-Ginger tea and white bread
-Peanut butter and cassava crackers
-"Bouye," which is a highly-sweetened porridge made of flour boiled with star anise, cloves, and cinnamon.

We've been surprised at how sweet the food is in general. Haitians are not shy about adding sugar to anything.

I've actually had a few cooking lessons this week. I've learned how to:
-Mill corn
-Mill beans
-Sort through and clean rice
-Pound spices (in addition to the ones listed above, popular spices are garlic, scallions, and hot peppers. Alexis got a big laugh when she asked about adding ginger to the mix. Apparently ginger is only for making tea, not for cooking.)
-Prepare greens for cooking (unfortunately for me, this meant adding chunks of pork in with the spices, rendering the delicious greens summarily inedible)

Has it been difficult, you ask, to avoid eating meat? Not so far. Most meals are served in sections, so it's pretty easy to avoid the plate of meat. I've sort of adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to sauces, though. I have to admit that I did eat a chunk of meat served to me by our host-mother, because she gave it to me specifically and specially. Fortunately it didn't do too much damage to my digestive system.

Oh, the kitchen! We've seen two so far, in the homes of our two host families. One has a charcoal stove that looks like a metal tray on legs, and one has a gas stove with an oven (curiously, used for food storage) that looks like the usual North American ones. One has a double set of sinks with cold water taps, and the other relies on buckets of water toted from one of the many fresh streams running through this town. Both have a supply of plastic mugs, metal cups, and plastic serving trays for carrying the food to the table.

Bryan and I are both looking forward to being able to cook for ourselves once we move to Desarmes. There's a lot of good food available locally, and I think we'll be able to make some pretty interesting meals once we can experiment in the kitchen.