Cooking

Cooking here has been interesting, but because we were here in 2006, I was much more prepared. We make everything from scratch which is fun but time consuming. Some things we have made that I don’t make back home include hamburger buns, bread, tortillas, pizza dough, kidney beans (I buy canned ones, already cooked). It has been hard for us to get vegetables so our diet has been limited. Fortunately, we just found a place that sells some vegetables by the hospital. There are plenty of avocados for guacamole and bananas.
We can’t use the water from the tap for cooking or drinking, so we catch rain water, boil it, then put it through a filter. We have to use filtered water to clean vegetables and for all cooking, including boiling pasta, so making sure we have enough water is important.
Also, we have to light our stove and oven with a match in order to cook. I do not like matches, but I have grown to be less scared of this process.
Cooking does consume a lot of our time but for the most part it has been enjoyable. For example it took 3 people 4 hours to prep and cook a meal of hamburgers, french fries and some sides. I do feel like I have been cooking for months and it has only been a week!