Journal #21

This weekend was one of my favorites so far in Antigua. I got the privilege to cook lunch for our family in their house. Of course I had some help because I am not used to cooking with a gas stove. It is something I better get used to though. I went to the grocery store with Maria on Saturday morning. We were going to buy as much there as we could and then go to the market for the meat. We were having spaghetti. Maria had told me earlier that morning that it would be best to go to the market to buy the beef for the sauce. She said the best thing to do was buy it in a slab, take it home and clean it and then put it in the food processor to grind it. I have no clue how to clean meat. I am accustomed to just dumping it into the pan from the container it came in at the store. Anyway, we ended up buying already ground beef from the grocery store and I did not have to do all of the cleaning and stuff.

I started preparing the dessert around 10:30 because I was going to have to use the oven. As many of you know, I was going to make a chocolate cobbler about 4 weeks ago and the oven was not working so I did not get to make it. It still has not been repaired, but Friday for lunch Maria made lasagna. It took about an hour and a half to cook. I asked if I could try to make my chocolate dessert on Saturday and she said she thought it would be fine.

I got everything ready, poured all the ingredients in, lit the oven and put the dessert in to cook. An hour later I checked the oven to see how things were going and the oven was cold. It had completely gone out! Luckily, the daughter-in-law was making an apple pie also and she needed an oven too. She called her friend down the road and asked to use her oven. We loaded the car, one of the maids and I held the desserts, and when we opened the door to leave, there was a car parked outside blocking the driveway. While the two of us holding the pans waited in the car, the other maid and the daughter-in-law went looking for the driver of the car. Here there are signs on every garage door telling people not to park in front of the door. When the driver of the car returned to the car, about 15 minutes had gone by and he just jumped in his car without an apology or anything. The daughter-in-law just said to him that we had been trying to get out for 15 minutes and he just drove away.

We were then on our way to the friend’s house. When we drove out of the driveway the pans sloshed all over the place. Luckily the chocolate had a larger pan under it and did not get all over the place. The apple did spill all over my lap. We went a back way to the house because it was the time of day where there was a lot of traffic. We of course got stuck behind a delivery truck that was trying to turn around in the middle of the road and everyone was blowing their horns. It was crazy. We finally got through and arrived at the house. The oven was ready and we put the pans in. I went back to the house to finish preparing the rest of the lunch which was already late. We were supposed to eat at 1:00 but due to our oven problems we did not eat until 2:15. Our meal was very good, but I was glad it was over.

This was an experience to teach me that everything is not always going to go exactly as planned and I need to be willing to change and not get frustrated. I learned a big lesson and realized that everything turned out the way it was supposed to in the end.

Shelly