If we thought yesterday was a mind blowing experience, it had nothing on today. We got up at 5, forewarned that today was going to be busy. By the time I stumbled into the kitchen, (which entails coming out of the tree house, across the muddy yard with chickens, little miss Piggy, a very noisy rooster, and who knows what else creepy crawlers) Abilena was already making breakfast. She asked me if I knew how to bake and said I was in charge of Fry Jack. Uh, okay I'm game, but what the heck IS that? She had made several tennis ball sizes of dough, made from cassava or banana flour, that were heaped on a plate. She showed me how to flatten them out by spinning them on a plate with one hand while stretching them out with the other. Let's just say I shredded my pour little dough ball while she made a perfectly round 8" very thin one. She then cut it in half and placed it in some very hot oil. It immediately puffed up. It was flipped once and then placed in a bowl. Abilena got a chuckle out of my feeble attempts so we ended up doing it as a team. She made them while I cooked and flipped them. After making 20 or so she finally told me that she first learned how to do them when she was 16 and it took her until she was about 20 before she got it right. Turns out her Kekchi Mayan family only used corn flour, but Juan's Mopan Mayan family used wheat flour and Abilena had a steep learning curve as well. She also made some beans and I cooked scrambled eggs. I told Henry, their son, that he was lucky today. He got two moms making his breakfast with lots of love. He was headed off to school, but was disappointed that the school bus wasn't running today. Turns out the government didn't pay the drivers so the kids are on their own getting there. While we were cooking Abilena shared with me that she will be married 15 years next week and that it was an arranged marriage. She said she is very happy and they have a good life. Her mom is 50 years old. Hard to believe that I'm older than their teenage son's grandmother! Carmelita, is Abilena's younger sister. She is 17 and helps out in their chocolate business. The three of us had a grand time cooking and preparing dishes all day.
The big event today was getting ready for a tour of 20 people visiting their chocolate operation. Juan will give them a tour of their facility, explain how to make chocolate the Mayan way and Abilena was in charge of making a Mayan meal. Everything this family makes comes from the land! Everything. You want sugar, you grow it and press it. They grow their own spices so Abilena had allspice berries, dried and ground, etc. So at a very early hour Ned and I were out picking coconuts. Ned would split them open and then I would use the hand grinder to get all the coconut meat from the shell. We then ran water over the coconut and pressed it through a sieve thus making coconut milk. The rice and chicken was cooked in this. Oh yes, the chicken too came from the farm. I was spared cleaning and plucking it today, but Abilena told me that I would definitely be helping out with that later on.
We spent hours and hours preparing the meal. I cut up bunches of callaloo, pumpkin, potatoes, carrots, cilantro and several other herbs and veggies. By the time the tour got here I was already exhausted! Turns out the tour is a group from Dandelion Chocolate out of SF. We know them! You can't imagine the look on Todd's face (one of the owners) when he saw Ned and I. Priceless. We know Todd from a class we took from them last year.
Well, every dish, bowl, sieve, pot and pan was used to prepare this meal. There are dishes stacked everywhere and it was time to clean up. No easy feat considering there is no hot water, just a pipe that brings cool water into their kitchen. I was all ready to dig in and start washing when I realized there was no more water. Zip, nada, nothing. Abilena said the water comes from a community tank in the village and the people in charge of keeping it filled were probably out in the field working so we had to wait until they came home. Okay, I here and now promise that I will never, ever take a single drop of water that comes out of my faucet for granted again.
Ned worked so hard all morning trying to get a nice fire going in the stove. We needed it for cooking and heating up the water. There is no stacked and split wood around here. It's the tropical forest jungle and everything is pretty wet. The chimney (basically a pipe thru the thatched roof) had a leak so the inside of the stove was very wet. Needless to say that poor Ned had quite a challenge. A trick that Abilena showed us was to use the left over husks from the coconut shells to keep it sparked.
By the time the fire was roaring the sun was high in the sky and the day was hot and humid. Cooking Mayan style is not for sissies.
The shower is actually just a pipe with a shower head on it. It comes from the same source of water - the village tank. Of course there is no hot water, but I actually didn't mind. It's such a luxury to just get wet and cleaned off and it's so hot that it actually feels good. I'm just hoping that the water comes flowing again before bedtime. (I learned last night to make sure to take your shower before dark. Walking along the plank on the tree house as the bats are flying around was a tiny bit too real for me. It's also harder to spot spiders and the other creepy crawlers). FYI- By the time I'm posting this blog, the water has returned and Carmelita and I spent several hours talking, laughing and playing games as we did dishes. Ned helped out sifting cacao powder and then eventually he too got roped into dish duty.
Some observations I made today. Juan, Abilena and their family are some of the happiest people I have ever met. Evenings are really enjoyable sitting around the table and trading stories. Their children, Henry and Lucretia, shared songs and dances from their Mayan culture. They are so sweet and kind and have a very gentle manner about them. Even tho they live a very simple life they laugh often, are incredibly kind to each other and truly live in the moment. If the water isn't flowing, no worries it'll come back soon. The fire isn't getting started, no worries we'll figure something out. Did the chocolate just harden and wasn't tempered properly? Oh well, we'll fix it tomorrow. When Abilena was eating some chocolate Juan had a big smile on his face, looked at her and said, "My wife is so sexy. I love the way she eats chocolate." So cute! As a person who has a tendency to get stressed out if things aren't just perfect it was a wonderful lesson on how to live in the now. There's also no mirrors here. Yeah, I have no idea what my hair looks like or if I'm a mess. And you know what - it feels awesome! My lesson today was to live in the now and accept yourself as you are and oh yeah, laugh often. Pretty good life lesson I would say.
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