The Countdown Begins

Our trip home is just around the corner. I'm thinking some about the food, but not as much as a thought I would. Yesterday we watched the World Cup UK-US game at The Hard Rock Café (our first time there) and ate nachos. They were nacho-y. They had actual pickled jalapeños - that was nice. I am not typically a fan of the Hard Rock Café - it has this weird kinda' 1980s feel to me. I think that comes from the fact that back when Austin was more small town-like we used to think it was cool to go to Dallas and go shopping and eat at the Hard Rock…that's really 80s…and it was the 80s. Now Austin has it's own Hard Rock. I've never eaten there. Can't imagine I ever will.

Mostly what I am thinking about is how weird it will be to go home. We are now well over what I like to call the 6th month hump - the time abroad when you decide you're either going to sink or swim in your host country. We're swimming (literally, in crystal clear Caribbean water, which helps) most of the time. We like it here. It's homey. So, to that end, I think it will be weird to go back to a place that's so easy. We have so many conveniences living in the capital, but even the convenient things have a level of negotiating that has to happen all the time. Lately, I have been thinking about certain situations back home, imagining myself there and then I suddenly realize that my imagination is happening in Spanish. I speak Spanish, but thinking about a whole world in pure English seems so…simple.

Eating out here is incredibly expensive. Even a fast food bill is easily $20 for our family of four. That will be different back home. I'm determined to not go overboard on things like chips and queso, really good pizza and Starbuck's. I will go overboard on all the delicious salads and fresh tomatoes from the garden and salsa.

I'm trying, I guess, to find balance before we go. Not just to establish a balance of what I'll eat, but what we'll buy because it's convenient and we think we'll need it and we won't be able to get it here. And, a balance of mind. You can't be the person who goes back to the States and points out, at every corner, "It's so crazy that people stop at the red lights and stay in their lanes," "How weird not to have people wash your windows at stop lights," "There are no children begging here," "This lettuce looks so green." That kind of thing annoys people quickly. Moderation of shock at how different things are is appropriate I guess. Perhaps increased meditation is in order. The countdown begins.

Ratatouille

My worries have been proven a little true - it's more difficult to keep up with the blog now that I'm working. And, the extent to which I productively concentrate on food has also slipped. I do spend a fair amount of time in unproductive concentration on food - this includes (1) thinking of quick meals that enable me to hold on to one of the household chores (cooking) that I am not prepared to completely turn over to Vilma and (2) realizing that the time I am away from the boys results in an increase in the amount of time they eat what typical Dominican children eat.

Oh the sugar! If there was any doubt about how Dominicans contributed to the economic stability of their own country, rest assured, they keep the sugar industry well supported. Dominican children (yes, I am freely generalizing here) eat a ton of candy. This candy gets passed to the boys in places from the doctor's office to school from the neighbors' children to random people on the street (yes, pure stranger danger there!). I came home yesterday to find our two year old sucking on a BlowPop that he was washing down with a juice box (in which the first two ingredients were water and sugar…nice). I hadn't realized when I was at home how much I regulated those things (i.e. threw them away or refused them before the boys could catch the offer). It also makes me realize that I completely took for granted in the States that my children's childcare providers were not passing this stuff on to my kids. I think the most I ever had to do was ask my mom not to give my oldest cereal bars because the third ingredient was high fructose corn syrup - but, at least those things actually had fruit…and a grain of some sort.

I have completely digressed from where I intended to go with this post. So, back on track. Recently, my vegetable hating four year-old has been really into the movie Ratatouille. He asked me the other day if I know how to make Ratatouille. I said, yes - which is basically true - I know how to roast vegetables in the oven. In fact, I told him that I had made it once and he wouldn't eat it because it had vegetables. To this he exclaimed that he would have eaten it had he known it was ratatouille. "Maybe the one you made didn't look like the one from the movie Mom." "Well," I thought, "that's true. It was really just some vegetables in a pan." So we agreed - we would make Ratatouille. I did my research - that is, I watched the part of the movie where the make the ratatouille. You can't learn much from watching a cartoon rat make a dish - in case you were wondering. But, I did figure I could come up with something that looked like the thing in the movie. Tonight we went to work in the kitchen together. Dominican holiday so no work, no school = plenty of time to make dinner = happy Mommy.

As always, I had to use what was available here, so this may not be super traditional, but it was really, really good. And, in the end, it wasn't that time consuming - about 30 minutes to prep and one hour of cooking time unattended. It serves 4-6. Here you go:

Ratatouille

Ingredients:

• 1 large carrot, peeled and very thinly sliced
• 1 zucchini, very thinly sliced
• 2 small-medium sized potatoes (red or Yukon gold), very thinly sliced
• 4 Roma tomatoes, very thinly sliced

For the Sauce:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• ½ red bell pepper, diced
• 1 small onion diced
• 3 garlic cloves crushed
• 5 fresh sage leaves chopped
• leaves from 3 sprigs fresh rosemary chopped
• two tbsp tomato paste
• a pinch of sugar
• salt and pepper to taste

The Steps:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

To make the sauce, heat the olive oil in a skillet. Add the onion and garlic and sauté for 2-3 minutes. Add the bell pepper, sage and rosemary and sauté for 1-2 minutes. Add the tomato paste and about ½ cup water, stir and allow to simmer. As the water cooks down, add more little by little until you get the consistency of a chunky sauce. Add a pinch of sugar and salt and pepper to taste.Spread the sauce into the bottom of a 9x9 inch glass pan. It should thoroughly cover the bottom - there should be plenty of sauce, use it all. Begin to make layers with your veggies by making little stacks in your hand (e.g. carrot, potato, zucchini, tomato). Place the veggies in the pan on their ends, slightly tilted (a little like the way Oreos look in the plastic packing). Do this until you have long rows of veggies.


Bake for one hour until the sauce is bubbling up into the veggies, the veggies are tender and some areas are crispy on top. You'll find when you eat it that the onions in the sauce will have caramelized and the tops of some of the veggies will have taken on a chewy/crispy texture while the bottoms will be super tender.

Serve with a green salad and crusty bread. Enjoy!

Bananafied

I just have to write about one of my very, very favorite Dominicanisms (and there are many). This one I will write about here because it is food-related…kinda'.

Platanado means to become acculturated, Dominicanized, local. In English, bananafied. This word might actually be used in other Caribbean islands, or come to think of it, in other Spanish speaking countries. I don't know. But, I never heard it before here and I love it.

I feel platanado sometimes, against all odds. I am clearly far from becoming Dominican, but sometimes in tiny ways I feel like I fit here. It's nice this bananification.

Cuppa' Caribbean Joe

The DR is a coffee producing country. For most of my life I drank tea and then somewhere (i.e. grad school) I began drinking coffee. I love coffee. I was very much looking forward to being in a coffee producing country. But alas, my coffee journey has not turned out to be exactly what I had expected (silly expectations).

But first, some back story. When we first learned we would be posted to Santo Domingo and we read about the frequent power outages we decided to go power free and switched to a French press. That was step one in the major coffee transformation. There was no going back - the coffee just tasted so much fresher and fuller. Then, we decided to invest in a little grinder (yes, it requires electricity, so we kind of balanced out in the end). We came to love, love, love grinding our own coffee. It all seemed like it would work out so perfectly.

The French press and grinder had won the coveted spot of suitcase transport (over HHE and UAB) for the very reason that we would have, above all else, perfect Dominican coffee brewing within hours of arrival. We arrived and went shopping. Imagine our shock that we weren't able to find whole bean coffee. We decided that we might have to shop around a bit, but settled on the Santo Domingo Coffee (the Dominican favorite in a simple red and white bag). We brewed our first cup and our hearts sank in disappointment. It tasted burned and stale.

I then began my journey to find whole bean coffee. Store after store resulted in dead ends. Finally, I learned that the Embassy store was selling some through a Peace Corps volunteer project. We tried it. It was good. We were happy. But, inevitably, we would run out and find it to be a hassle to go to the Embassy for more (parking, traffic, store hours). We debated our next steps. This went on for months. Then, one night, after dinner at our neighbor's house we were served coffee. Rich, smooth, chocolaty coffee. Perfect. "What kind is this!?" I asked. "Oh, just the Santo Domingo," was the reply. I couldn't believe my ears or taste buds. What had happened? How could I like something that I had hated merely months ago?

I was tempted to try that ground, stale, super-cheap stuff again, but couldn't quite bring myself to do it despite the positive experience I had had that night. And, I still really wanted to hold out for whole bean...and then again, it was so good that night. I just couldn't make up my mind. I bought more of the Embassy kind. Then last week we decided on a whim to try out a grocery store we hadn't been to before. We strolled through the less than fabulous, slightly rundown aisles and sub-edible, fly-filled produce section thinking it would be our last trip. Then, I saw a clerk pouring whole bean coffee into a grinder. Jeremy and I looked at each other and scrambled to see where it had come from. There, in the midst of the produce section was not one, but two kinds of local whole bean coffee. And just days later we are floating on a sea of island, caffeine satisfaction.

We don't drink it like the Dominicans (very, very strong, black, in tiny cups and with tons of sugar), but we are converts. Or, reverts…or something. It's strange, we had tried Dominican coffee back home and liked it, but I was once told during my coffee search that what stays here isn't as good because the best stuff is exported. Now I think it's just a matter of taste. It's that view of what's normal. It's the acquired taste of things. Either way, it seems like another way in which we just keep discovering and that never gets old. Reminds me of why we do this.

Cereza!

When we first got here we Netflixed a movie called Sugar. I highly recommend it. It's about the experiences of a Dominican pelotero (baseball player) who is recruited to the minor leagues in the US. In one scene, the main character recalls getting a scar on his head as a child. He says he got the scar falling from a cherry tree. I remember when we were watching the movie I said, "They have cherry trees here?"

Indeed - we are now in cherry (cereza) season! I really wish I had a photo of the man who goes down a super busy street near our house with a rickety horse drawn carriage and wagon with cerezas overflowing. It's this unbelievable contrast of the modern with the old - like so many things here. When we go out - jugo de cereza has now been added to the list of fresh juices that the waiters list off for our boys when they order.

Yesterday, on the way home, stuck in the loco Dominican traffic a man was selling bags of cerezas. One large bag went for 100 pesos (about $2.50, but more like $1 in real value). He ended up giving me two bags for 150 pesos. The bags were almost overflowing and filled the car with a thick, syrupy sweet smell. I was imagining cherry cobbler.

When we got home Vilma said, "I'll make juice!" I said we could do that, but to freeze half the cherries so I could use them later to make a cobbler. As soon as she started preparing them for juicing I realized that was not going to happen. I actually have a cherry pitter - a very handy little tool that I almost never use. But, I was surprised to find that the cherries had more than one pit! And, they are so small they popped right through the part of the pitter that is supposed to hold the fruit. So no cobbler for us - which is really okay because we are now less than one month away from Austin and the final stages of peach season which means peach cobbler…with BLUEBELL!!! Yippeee!

But - no worries! They are sweet and do make great juice. Interestingly, because of the seed and size issue, Vilma just dumped the whole fruit in the blender, chopped it up and then strained out the seed parts with a sieve. De-lish!

Where the Heart Is

My teenage neighbor - an FS child - has asked to videotape me for her theater project. I have apparently now reached the age where I can be considered an adult by high schoolers and therefore worth "interviewing." I'm not sure what this means considering I think she thought I was about eight years younger than I am, but anyway that's what's happening.

Tonight was the big interview. One of the questions was, "If you could have the perfect evening out what would it be?" Amazing - no matter where I am in the world - the answer is infinitely easy. Beer, chips, queso, tacos, live music, outside.

Life is picking up in pace here. We're feeling settled. We're both working. We have a great network of super cool friends. The boys love Vilma and are speaking killer Spanish. We are in love with our life. But…well, it's not really a "but," maybe more of an "and" my greatest moments lie in Texas food. In the end, even if for just a night, nothing will ever top my Austin comfort foods paired with the perfect bliss of rock-a-billy, hill country breezes and summer shooting stars. Maybe this is me beginning my R&R countdown.

The Small Stuff

My life is full of great and fantastic adventures. I frequently think, "Is this real?" So much of our FS life is big - big moves, big language adjustments, big pack-outs, big culture shock. I try not to get wrapped up in the big stuff. I am a constant observer of the small things - but not by nature - it takes practice. Having kids has helped. They always notice the little things and that helps me notice the little things too. Like yesterday.

Back in Austin it's a normal spring occurrence for oak pollen to collect on one's windshield. It's really ugly stuff - brown, bristly, dusty and hyper-allergenic. It's nasty. Sometimes, because I used to only wash my car twice a year (yes, that's right) I would find oak pollen from the prior spring collected in the nooks and crannies of the engine.

But, this is DR - no oak pollen. What did I find collected on the windshield along the wipers - a mango!! I had parked under a mango tree the other day. My four-year-old thought this was endlessly fantastic. He was speculating about how long it had been there (I am thinking it rode out three days). He couldn't wait to cut it open - although, he is not the biggest mango fan (it's the texture, I think). It was delicious!

Seriously! I live a life where mangos fall on my car and collect like autumn leaves…or Texas oak pollen. It's awesome….and perhaps provides a warning about parking under coconut palms.