Today was all about just getting 'er done, in Mayan time. By the time Ned and I got up and made it over to the open air kitchen both Lucretia and Henry were already at school. Abelina, of course, had been up for hours and whipped up a huge stack of banana pancakes piled high and waiting for us. They were served with guava jelly. Rather than the traditional pot of Mayan hot chocolate we opted for coffee this morning. This entailed me going to the roaster in the chocolate room and scooping out a fresh batch of roasted beans. Yep, it's beans they have grown on their own farm. Can't get much fresher than this other than making a trip to Caroline's Coffee in downtown Grass Valley! Okay, who's shocked that I'm actually drinking real coffee?!
When we decided to undertake this adventure I made a vow that I would fully embrace and experience it all. My son Josh was a great example. He was a vegetarian but when he lived in China for a year he decided to experience it all too. If he can go from being a vegetarian to eating duck heads I figure I can drink real coffee, and eat barracuda and rodents. Juan, Abelina, Ned and I sat around for quite awhile, as a soft rain was falling, working our way thru the pancakes and a pot of coffee talking about everything from politics to trash American TV. Once again, we had several good laughs. Ever try and explain the Kardashians to someone who lives in a village of thatched huts? Yeah, pretty surreal.
All in good Mayan time we finally got started on our chores. First in order for me was figuring out how to do laundry. Abelina has a new washer machine. It is alongside her cacao winnower. When Ned and I first started making chocolate and before we built our chocolate room, our washer machine was next to our cacao winnower too. I really liked the symmetry of this. Abelina told me to just hang everything over our railing. Great - now the entire Mayan neighborhood knows I wear colored bikini underwear.
Ned and Abelina are kindred souls and both live and breathe all things chocolate. Juan and I are more the marketing and packaging gurus. Ned and Abelina had their heads together for most of the day working out some particular challenges to making chocolate in a very hot and humid environment. Ned was in heaven. He even donned a hairnet in the interest of good food safety. Those two roasted and winnowed, created and experimented all day long. They were even at it again after dinner with Juan joining in on the brainstorming. In fact, these three were so engrossed in the finer points of chocolate tempering that when I was freaking out about some spiders by my bed, Henry had to come to the rescue. He is so absolutely sweet. He very calmly came to my room declaring, "Spider Man to the rescue." A little while later I heard a big noise in the bunk room next door. Again, Henry was my knight in shining armor. He said, "You know Debi, it could be a great big rat." Great...
I held the flashlight as Henry went in first. Turns out it was just a clipboard that fell over. Geez, see what happens when I'm all alone in the tree house by myself?! Henry was very sweet and said to just call him again if I needed saving.
My job today was to package and label their chocolate lotion, an amazing concoction of cocoa butter, coconut oil, vanilla, orange peel and goats milk. As I kept spilling a little bit here and a little bit there I would rub it into my body. I don't think there was a part of me that wasn't wonderfully and gloriously well oiled and by the end of the day I was one great big amazingly smelling supple mess. As an added bonus it really helped my blisters too!
As usual people popped in and out all day long. This afternoon a small tour group from England came by. Juan gave them a tour of the chocolate making process and the Mayan Cultural Museum (which is located in an outdoor area with several musical instruments, early kitchen implements and a wooden sugar cane press) They also enjoyed the traditional hot chocolate with a sampling of Ixcacao chocolate. Later on a shaman, named Santiago, stopped by. I spent some time talking with him and really found him to be quite interesting. I was impressed with how well he spoke English, particularly American English. Turns out he lived on Catalina Island for 5 years. He lives in a village not too far from here. Who knows, maybe I'l even go visit him. This really is a fun place to hang out with people coming and going, pigs and chickens running around and always Albelina's wonderful laughter filling the place.
I promised Abelina that I would help with dinner, but unfortunately I fell asleep during part of the prep. I followed her out behind the house and watched as she retrieved one of her chickens. She asked me if I'd like the honor of killing it. I politely (ahem] declined and for the first time in my life watched someone slaughter a chicken.
After the blood is drained from it, the next step is to pour some boiling water over it. I think that helps the feather plucking, but not sure. This is the point that I decided to lay down and take a rest. Honestly, I really was going to help pluck the feathers. I've obviously never done it and was quite fascinated to see how it was done. That's when I conveniently fell asleep. By the time I woke up Abelina and Lucretia were in the throes of making another mysterious dish. My only contribution was cutting up the garlic and onions and mashing up something that came in a package called black recado. The dish served tonight was called Chimole, a Mestizo specialty. It's an inky black soup with a hard boiled egg, chicken, yams and cassava. It was accompanied by an enormous bowl of homemade corn tortillas and an optional bowl of super spicy pepper sauce. Once again, really delicious. The volunteer organization we are part of, ProWorld, called today to check in and see how we were acclimating. They asked if there was anything we were unhappy about. Yeah, getting fat from eating all this amazing food! Neise, I'm counting on you to get me back in shape when I return home, but in the meantime I have two more weeks of Belizean immersion. Let the Good Times Roll.
No comments:
Post a Comment