New in the Kitchen

One of my favorite rooms in the house is the kitchen.  Maybe because I like baking and cooking.  Or maybe because I like eating.  Or maybe because it's simply a comforting room.  Who really knows.

I long for the day I get my very own kitchen.  You know, one with an oven and a stove.  Preferably a full sized refrigerator.  Dishes and dish towels.  Silverware.  Kitchen Aid appliances.  I should stop talking about kitchens.

But, wait.  That's what this post is about...

Pressing on.

Each week when I go to the grocery store I aim to get something new.  It makes my kitchen feel even more like home, it expands my diet (I haven't had pasta in weeks- that's all I lived on my first 3 weeks here), and it gives me inspiration.

What's new in my kitchen?

First item up....

Spices and olive oil!  I have become a HUGE fan of marinating meat...okay chicken.  I'm going to be famous for it one day.  Yeah, maybe not.  Anyway, these are the spices I currently have: ginger, curry, black pepper, salt, cumin, and garlic.  Oh, oh, oh and fresh cilantro.

I have gained much wisdom from my friend Melissa and her mother in the matter of spices and pan frying chicken.

• Curry is the magic chicken seasoning!  Do it! You won't regret it!
• The pan needs to be steaming hot before you put the chicken on.  Steaming.  This will keep the chicken from drying out.
• If you put the fresh cilantro in a glass of water, and then place a plastic baggie over the stems, it will keep longer.

Secondly...

S'mores!  I haven't been able to find graham crackers, but I have found an okay substitute.  I'm going to have to buy more chocolate before I make them though.  Oops.

Third item of business...

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!  So, this looks like a lime.  I think it is a lime.  But they call them lemons and it tastes like a lemon so lemonade it is.  And yes, I made that without any help. Okay so I googled how to make it.  But that's all.

Forth...

Refried beans, crema, and tortillas.  But the tortillas aren't new. These are all items used in making my new addiction.  Baliadas.  The crema and refried beans go inside the tortilla.  Heat it up.  Eat it.  Yum.  Most people here like to put this nasty cheese in the middle as well.  I don't like the nasty cheese, so I don't put it in. 

And last but not least (this is my favorite!)...

 

My big bowl o' goodness.  I think it gives my kitchen a whole new feel.  I open up my doors, see this, and smile.  Definitely homey and inviting.  Actually, I'm smiling just thinking about it.

Now I'm going to go dream about my future kitchen.  Extra counter space.  A giant window.  Glass containers filled with all my baking needs.  Blissful and currently unattainable.

House Church and Small Group

All the North Americans are back in Gracias, school is back in session, and life is picking back up.  I still have not figured out how the starting up of activities not at all related to school still coincides with the start of school. 

As I drink my coffee and listen to the rain I'm going to let you in on what's going on in Gracias and the surrounding area.

Catulaca is a town about 45 minutes from Gracias.  Shannon started a house church there a little over a year ago, and that is the main one I go to every Sunday night.  The people there are beyond welcoming.  My love grows every time I see them.  This particular church has started growing; I see new people every Sunday.  Some have only been once, but others keep coming. 

As Shannon preaches through the book of Acts, I teach a Sunday school lesson.  This is what it looks like for me to study the material.

There's my Bible, a Spanish Bible, and a worksheet that just happens to be in Spanish as well.  The first time I taught a lesson I figured the kids would be able to do the worksheet on their own with little help so I didn't fill one out.  Big mistake.  Yeah, I should have known better...I know, I know.  Lesson learned.  This is what I took last Sunday.  Worksheets completely filled out.  In Spanish.

                                                                                                 

So, how class works is I tell them the story or one of the older girls reads it from the Bible.  Then I ask them questions from the lesson.  Last Sunday I took it a step further and asked them a life application question about the lesson.  I would do this all the time in the States, but here the education level and critical thinking skills are different. 

Then, they get to color picture about the lesson.  Below is the picture I colored of Adam and Eve aka Eric and Ariel.  Do they not look like they come straight out of the Little Mermaid?

When I color the pictures, I do it so they have something to look at while the story is being told/read.  I don't want to use all the ink in the markers so I just outline the picture.  One of the boys decided to do the same.  Such a cute copy cat.

After coloring they do the worksheets I talked about earlier.  And then...the end.  Oh, I forgot there is candy involved and scripture memory and prayer.  The class is a working progress, but it's going in the right direction.

There is also house church in La Puerta and Sanisera that I sometimes attend on Monday and Thursday respectively.  There is not yet a children's ministry at those places.  I see it happening in the future, though. Both towns are about 20 minutes from Gracias. 

 La Puerta is the same town the radio station is in.  Actually, the lady's house we have church in is the secretary/accountant for the radio station.  This church is just now starting back up after a time of business

Sanisera (which I think I'm spelling incorrectly) once had a decent sized church that had some disagreements and split.  Or rather ceased to exist.  Now they're trying to start it back up again.  If you want something to pray about, this would be it.

AND I NOW BELONG TO A SMALL GROUP OF ENGLISH SPEAKING NORTH AMERICANS!!  Can you tell I'm a little excited about this?  Well, I am.  We meet once a week to read through the Bible, pray, encourage, mentor, confess, and grow.  Ah, the joy of having accountability partners once again.  Seriously, it's joyful.

A Life without Cookbooks and Measuring Cups

I've mentioned before in a post quite awhile ago that I have to use recipes because I am not a wife nor a mother and therefore do not inherently have the ability to cook without them.  Well, it has become my goal to change that.  By learning to cook that is; not by becoming a wife or mother.  That's a little eccentric. 

Plus, I now have people to cook for!  Even better.  I love cooking for people.

So, what was on the menu last night?  Chicken somethin' something'.  Okay, so I really don't have a name for it.  I bet it has one if you google it.

Yesterday at about 11 am I decided to take the chicken out of the freezer and it was taking a lot longer than expected to thaw.  I wanted to make sure I was extra safe with this thawing out process because I am feeding three people other than myself, and I didn't want to be responsible for making them sick.  So what did I do?  Googled it.  (Seriously, I don't know what people did before google.)  The USDA is more helpful than I ever realized.

I put the chicken breasts into a ziplock baggie, placed it in cold water, and changed the cold water every thirty minutes until the chicken breasts were thawed.  This only took about an hour.

Afterwards I rinsed off the chicken (just a safe practice here in Honduras, and probably everywhere), and cut it in half horizontally lengthwise so the pieces weren't as thick.  Then I cut the breasts into strips and placed them into my homemade concoction to marinate in the fridge all afternoon.

The marinade consisted of crushed pineapple, lime juice, ginger, curry, and soy sauce.  Just a sprinkle here and a dash there.  I used my own judgement with no measuring...scary.

Three minutes after I cut up the pineapple, I was swarmed by bees.  But that's a whole other story.

About 6:45 pm I started cutting up the vegetables for stir fry: a potato, carrot, broccoli, green pepper, onion, and the rest of the pineapple.  I wish I had a red pepper to go with it, but I couldn't find one at the market.  Towards the end of cooking the vegetables, I added a little bit of ground ginger.  And, I fried up these vegetables while simultaneously cooking rice.

Once the vegetables were finished, I covered them with a lid and started cooking the chicken.  See, I was cooking three parts of one meal with only a two burner electric stove.

In the end there was rice, stir fried vegetables, and chicken.  Cooking time was about an hour.  Might I just say all three parts were still warm when we started eating.  Score.  And I was asked what I did to the chicken.  Score again.  And I was told that I'm the only gringa who has been able to cook rice. Three scores in one meal.  I'm just going to stop there or my next meal will end up terrible.

But all in all it was nice to be able to cook for the girls.  It felt like home.  I miss cooking for those I care about.  Let me just say, this will be happening more often.  I just wish there was a way I could bake here.

Life Update

I just realized I haven't updated you guys lately.  Sorry about that.  Let's see, what's been happening?

It's finally raining!!  I know Oklahoma is hurting something bad too, so I'm not going to say much about our rain problem down here.  Honestly, if I could bucket up some rain and send it your way I would gladly do so.

I have a Sunday school class again!  I miss the boys back home, but they now belong to another non-mother who loves them as her own.  It's a bitter sweet moment to be moving forward.  It's hard for me to communicate let alone relate to my kids here, but I'm enjoying it none the less.

A sense of being welcome and at home  has begun to take over.  I've started to go to two house churches regularly and I've visited another church several times.  It's nice going to a place and knowing the smiling faces that greet me.  The faces of the grocer, land lord, and restaurant owners are becoming ones I look forward to seeing as well.

My friend moved into my apartment compound.  We're pretty much as roommates as roommates can be without actually being roommates.  A little redundancy never hurt anyone, right?  Anyway, I love having a friend a hop, skip and jump away.  Literally, a hop, skip, and jump.  She's that close.

The North American teachers are here!  Two of them also live in my apartment compound.  Their school starts on Monday.  I'm hoping to get the chance to set in and observe some classes once they get settled in.  One thing I'm thinking about doing once I graduate and get a real job is teaching middle school science.  Observing their classrooms will be nice since I am not an education major...actually I don't think many of them are either.  Even better.

My stupid wisdom teeth are coming in.  Well, at least one of them.  Yeah, I hate it already.

I come home for vacation a month from today.  It doesn't seem possible.  Time has already flown by way too quickly.  It seems like I've only been here a few weeks...but on the other hand it seems like I've lived here forever.  Weird.  I don't know how to explain that one.

If you haven't done so already, check out my tortilla making video on facebook.  It's worth taking a look at.

Playing Catch-up with Pictures

I was going to attempt to pull a Pioneer Woman and blog about the food I learned to make this past weekend, but instead I'm just going to show you some pictures.  I might write about the food later.

I met a group from Georgia who was helping this particular church build a roof.  They were not associated with the ministry I'm involved in, but the people of the church are. 

This is one of three compost piles we have at the radio station.  It started out as tall as the wood posts in the corner.  We still have a ways to go, but it's working.

And this is a ginormous grub found at the bottom of one of the compost piles.  Yummy.  Shannon is the one holding it in the picture, but he made me carry it to the camera which was forever away.  I don't care much for creepy crawly insects.

Castle in Honduras?  Yes.  Some people call it a fort.  Not really sure which one it is, but I visited it!

I learned how to make gringas aka quesadillas, guacamole, and salsa all from scratch.  Best meal I've had here thus far.

I learned how to take a moto.  That's what the little red thing is called.  All I have to do is flag them down and tell them where I want to go...in Spanish of course.  I feel quite accomplished.





I learned how to make homemade corn tortillas.  I like them, but most people think they are a bit bland.  A video of the process is in the making.  You'll be able to find it on facebook.