It's gettin' hot in here!

January 10, 2010
Life has slowed down here at the home with most of the children going home for our winter vacation. I should be traveling to Gorkha with some of the children next week for an outreach project and church dedication, but I don’t count on anything until it happens! In the absence of 10 of the kids, I’ve become a little more creative in the kitchen as we make rice much later now, and it’s just too hard to go from 7 till 12 every day without eating anything for breakfast!

So, my first experiment in the kitchen was sweet bread, which is basically like sweet tortillas that I make with a layer of cinnamon sugar and finely chopped almonds in the middle. It didn’t turn out exactly as I had planned (what things do?!) but after a few tries it was edible and the kids thought it was quite tasty! I don’t think they’d ever had sweet bread before! However, in true Nepali form, they decided it needed “MORE OIL!” so it ended up being more like a fried sopapilla without the puffyness! It was good enough to make again though, and the second time was much smoother and there was much less waste!

Then, we decided to venture into the realm of pancakes! They had definitely never had pancakes before, so introducing them was a lot of fun. All the kids still at home had advice for me to improve them, before they’d even tasted them! “Sister, don’t do it that way,” “you need more oil,” “turn up the gas, the flame’s too little,” and so much more! Finally, I looked at them and told them that I was making the pancakes and they were welcome to help, but they were not allowed to give advice. Well, after oiling the pan for the first pancake, to their panicked dismay I refused to let them put more oil in the pan, and to their amazement it didn’t stick, as the cast iron flatbread pan is very smooth! Well, they quickly realized that these are way more fun to make than flatbread (roti) as they get to “flip” the cakes and if they want to they can make designs with the batter! Our best designs so far are a Mickey Mouse head and flowers. They love them, and I love that they’re so easy :).

Finally, I made spaghetti for them one night, and it was quite the event. Rami and I went shopping for vegetables to put in the sauce, and in my American ignorance, I tried to only buy 3 chili peppers. Well, the shopkeeper burst out laughing and informed me that I couldn’t buy that many peppers. Their total cost would be less than a rupee (basically, less than a penny)! So, the smallest amount I could buy was 5 Rupees worth (it was the smallest balancing weight he had) and we ended up with over 50 chilis. Not that it mattered, because unknown to me, Rami chopped up 15 of them and put them in the sauce. Needless to say, it was the spiciest sauce I’ve ever had! Delicious, but so so hot! The kids loved it though, so we had it again a few days later for afternoon “snack.”

In my time in the kitchen, I’ve also started learning how to make curry. Not so difficult, but I don’t know what a lot of the spices are. In addition, I’ve never seen anyone use more green chilis than they do here, and I’ve seen some New Mexicans who love their green chili! But here we bring the green chili love to a whole new level! There are times I’m literally pouring sweat after eating due to the heat in the chili... it’s a good thing I love spicy food! I figure I’ll learn enough to make a least one Nepali dish while I’m here, and Manisha and Laxman already know how to make pancakes and I’m sure they’ll keep making them! It’s what we call teachers call collaborative learning :).