Cooking According to Peace Corps

I've let it be known on numerous occasions I'm in no way a master chef. At home PPC (Pre-Peace Corps) I had moments of excellence but those were mostly in part to Trader Joe's doing most of the leg work for me. Also the amount of kitchen tools I had at my disposal made cooking less of a culinary art and more of a paint by numbers activity. Here, I am equipped with an oven that looks like a Hasbro on steroids Easy Bake Oven

Measuring cups are also something I lack here. So I do a lot of eye balling and guess work which usually manages fine except for the Snickerdoodle Thanksgiving fiasco of 2009. "No they aren't chocolate cookies, that's just a lot of cinnamon....and banana"


I keep telling myself that I'm going to buy a blender. I always say next month when I get paid. Seriously NEXT MONTH...wait I'm going home, maybe July?

Another problem is that I hate doing dishes. In the winter it was out of survival as I didn't have heat or hot water in my kitchen. I could barely wash a glass without my fingers going miserably numb running into my room and hiding in my sleeping bag for the rest of the night.  

Today though I managed to make dinner and dessert successfully, and by successfully I mean I made dinner, ate dinner, and then didn't have to eat pepto tablets for dessert. I've decided to share these recipes with you, and how I've adapted to my Peace Corps lifestyle.

Main Course: Roasted Eggplant and Zucchini. 

Ingredients:

Eggplant or Aubergine depending on how long you've been teaching British English in your classroom.

Zucchini

Olive oil or the cheap mix of olive oil and "clean oil" that I got from the CBA

Salt

Lemon Juice

Pre-Heat your oven to around 230 C. Also if you have the capability heat from both top and bottom.

Cut Eggplant length wise and score it. Meaning I kind of cut it with my dull knife but not all the way through. Sprinkle some salt on it and let it sit there until Megavideo has told you have watched 72 minutes of video today. 

Wring out eggplant or blot with paper towel. Cut up zucchini then coat both of them in olive oil.

Line a pan with tin foil! This is key as you won't have to wash the pan when you're done. 

Put in the oven checking on them after about 15 minutes to stir.  Roast until desired consistency I like my food practically charred. 

Sprinkle with salt and lemon juice to taste. 

Dessert: Vegan Chocolate Cake.

Ingredients:

Cocoa Powder

Flour

Sugar

Oil

Warm Water

Salt

Baking Soda

Vinegar

Vanilla

Pre-oven to about 170-180 C. I'm still working on which temperature is the best for this. 

This is where it gets tricky since I don't have measure cups, so I work more with proportions.

Take standard glass and fill it 1/3 with cocoa powder. Then add 1 1/4 flour, 1 cup sugar. 1/3 cup oil. 1 cup warm water. Again since I don't get warm water in my kitchen I get it from the bathroom. A little salt and a little baking soda. A couple of splashes of vinegar...trust me you won't taste it later. Then one of those  of the butter/vanilla flavoring that come in the tubes. 

Put in oven. Go take a shower until your hot water runs out, then get dressed. By the time you're finished doing that the cake should be done. (Approximately 15 minutes)

Let cool or burn your fingers while snagging a bite.

Enjoy!

Happy Anniversary

Whelp.
I've been here a year. One year. A year? Sometimes it feels like I just got here, other days I can't even remember what America is like. I think we all know how challenging this year has been, firsts of everything usually are. So I thought instead of dwelling in self-reflection I'd dedicate this post to a couple of my favorite "seconds" as I look forward to my second year in the BG.

Second CD ever purchased: Now & Then Soundtrack. What little girl doesn't remember loving this movie?



Second Choice High School & College: I think the saying "first is the worst second is the best" is fitting when it comes to Kent and Colby. These are two places that I still consider to be home and think they were the best fit for me. I miss all of you dearly and there are few things I wouldn't do for a sandwich from Stroble's or Riverside/Big G's right now. Seriously.

Second time I ever left the country: Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica.
Second city I ever lived in (post-college): Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Second year out of college was spent repeating. Thank you for calling Anthropologie 5th Avenue, this is Elani. Not the most glamorous job, especially when you see "ladies" get crazy when they think they see a sale rack. However, laughing at the situation with all of my favorites in the stock room made it worth it. First day? Thank you.

Second concert ever attended: Dispatch .
Second cat owned: Doc. Other aliases include "No Diggity, no Doc", "Diggity", "Digs", "Monkey" and "Baby Cat". My companion during my post-workout ritual of eating breakfast while Maury Povich revealed paternity tests. It's his favorite.

My mom's second choice for my name: Elani. It was A LOT better than the alternative.

 We may fight, cry, bicker, and gossip but we also laugh until it hurts, remember it's silly to hold grudges about anything insignificant (in all likelihood it probably is), and dance party our hearts out. Here is to our SECOND year in Bulgaria, I look forward to starting it with people who I once thought of as friends but now I think of as my family.

1 month until summer

Only the Governator can get me through



No fear.

A Girl's Guide to Gostis

на гости "Na gosti"
Directly translated it means "on guests" but here in Bulgaria we volunteers know it as "come over for some tea but we're going to sit here for at least 5 hours and I'm going to feed you until you can barely move and/or breathe, make you drink rakia, and then send you home with some more food....and we'll do it again tomorrow"


The gosti is something I've avoided. I guess in the traditional sense. Na gostis are something I feel like I'm usually tricked into not knowing that I'll be with someone for hours, thinking we're just going to have a casual chat and tea. I still can't fathom why anyone would want to spend hours listening to me say da da (yes yes) over and over and speaking my broken bulgarski. I faux-gosti  practically daily under the guise of tutoring. We study for an hour then watch TV and eat for 2. It's enjoyable because TV is there to help break the awkward silences and my tutor speaks near perfect English after working at McDonalds for 3 summers in Montana. Today though was a full blown na gosti. On my way out of school a colleague asked me if I would like to go with her. Not really knowing where we were going I said sure. She told me to drop off my stuff and meet me outside of my apartment. I should have known what I was in for then. This woman I've really grown to like. She's one of the few teachers at my school who isn't afraid to talk to me and invites me to do things with her and her husband. Last weekend she took me to a monastery and an old village for a nice day trip. It was a beautiful day and I was afforded the luxury of driving in a car. This teacher of mine is a Biology teacher, primarily, but has taught a variety of subjects and has been teaching for 27 years. I think the reason why I like her so much is that she exemplifies what a good teacher should be. She loves all things science and loves sharing her knowledge with anyone who will listen, in this case me. We stop and look at different plants and she explains what they are, where they're from, and how they can be used. If she hears a bird she can identify it only by its call. I can only liken her excitement and thorough knowledge to the way I am able to spot Anthropologie clothes on television. She's so passionate about biology and I can tell the frustration that she has with the students. We talk for hours. About the differences between American schools and Bulgarian schools, about whether or not I'll stay in Bulgaria for longer than two years. I forget that this idea doesn't seem implausible to someone who is from Bulgaria. I tell her all the thing I like about Bulgaria but I also I tell her it's hard and that I probably won't. I tell her how much I miss my privacy, how I miss my anonymity. In a small town everyone knows who you are and what you do.  She gets that. Our compromise was me buying a house here so I can come back and visit. 


 She tells me what life was like during the change from communism to capitalism. She's in her 40s so she knows what life was like before the changes not like the younger generation, my generation, now. We were sitting outside in her garden, not something uncommon for a Bulgarian family. Everyone seems to have a garden. She tells me during communism that everyone had two jobs. The work that they did for everyone else, and then they came home and worked in the gardens for themselves. It makes sense and it's something that I never even thought of. Whatever they produced from their gardens was theirs and theirs alone. It seems like a lot of work, especially to me, who has subsisted on yogurt and granola for the past 10 months, but I understand.  


The rain starts to come in and I decide to make a break for it. 5 1/2 hours later I've eaten 2 meals and 2 desserts. She asks me if I want more. I politely decline, fortunately I was wearing my spandex however even those were becoming uncomfortably tight.  Still before I leave I'm told it's not healthy to only eat yogurt. But I like yogurt! Two jars of canned food are thrust into my hands. They were canned from her garden last year. After only a slight protest on my part I accept them. I tell her I'll be back soon and that I want to help her with her canning this summer. She laughs and tells me she enjoys my company. However I think she was laughing because she really can't wait to see this American girl make an attempt at gardening. If it wasn't why she was laughing, it should be. 

Don't Tell Me I Have A Case of the Mun-Days.

Instant Pick Me Up




Depeche Mode - Just Can't Get Enough (Music Video) from Depeche Mode on Vimeo.

730 days later...

My life changed dramatically 2 years ago. 2 years ago today. 2 years ago and 4 days later I decided that I needed a change, I decided to apply for the Peace Corps. For those of you who know me, I think I come off relatively carefree, for those of you who really know me I think we both know that's a lie. I'm a planner, and extremely circumspect in making decisions. I play it safe, doing what is expected of me. Whose expectations I'm trying to live up to I'm still not sure but I feel like there is some unattainable goal of being the perfect everything. Daughter. Sister. Friend. It's silly to think that perfection exists and it's even sillier to think that my parents expected it of me. My dad believed I could change the world. Now while I'm not expecting to do that, at least not yet, is there any more special than that? To have someone believe in you so much? I'm not like the men in my family, I'm not the dreamer that they are,  I'm pragmatic and complacent. I was looking for a desk job that I may or may not have loved, but I would do it because I work hard, I succeed, sometimes forgetting that there is a life out there to live.

I got my wake up call.

The thing about being a dreamer is that your life is filled with highs and lows, extreme ecstasy and turmoil. I learned that dreamers also break your heart which is probably why I prefer moderation. But here I am almost one year later, still in disbelief that I got on that plane. I thought there would be one reason or another to back out, that my pragmatism would convince me that I was making a mistake. Who goes to Bulgaria? Are you really making the right decision? Aren't you going to be 26 when you get back? Does that leave time for grad school? Law school? Establishing yourself in a career before you want to get married and have kids? Shut up. I'm 24. There is no better time than now and there is nothing else that I would rather be doing.

So dad, here's to you. Here's to breakfast for dinner, to coming to my field hockey, basketball, and lacrosse games and heckling refs (sometimes heckling teenage girls), to talking your way out of a speeding ticket that should have gotten the car impounded and you taken to jail when I was late to  practice on the way home from a college interview, to buying lotto tickets for every occasion, to letting me throw parties at your apartment even if my friends made a mess. Here's to showing me it's okay to have dreams and do something out of the ordinary. I will never be the same as you, but I now know I can be more like you without losing who I am and who I aspire to be.