Hobbies
sixth post
'Hobbies'
In my former post, most excellent dan-o'-philes, I wrote of all I've been doing and reading over these last few weeks. Well, it turns out that when you have no television, electricity, computers, or people who speak any languages you can understand, you end up with a lot more time on your hands than you thought exhisted in a day. Having lots of time on your hands, as history has shown us, has usually either led to insurrections and revolutions, or to the creation of new and exciting hobbies. Let me tell you about my newfound hobbies:
Some of you may know that while I am in love with New York Style Cheesecake and would elope with it at the drop of a hat; my heart is really torn, for I also have a deep and mellow love for Seaweed Salad, and would have no problems with our being married. However, what you may not have known, is that my love-triangle is really a quadrangle- I also have a long on-again-off-again history with Broccoli. In fact, as the date for my departure drew near, Broccoli and I got more and more possessive of each other, to the point that, when it was time to go, I could not bear to leave Broccoli behind. So I took Broccoli with me- in the form of seeds. I also brought dill, parsley, cilantro, green and yellow beans, carrot, radish and white-onion seeds, but my relationship with all of the latter is purely platonic (honestly, I also happen to have passionate feelings about Garlic. Call me Don Juan de Food-o).
Finding myself with all of these seeds, however, meant that I had to have a garden to be able to cherish and nurture them all, and so, in my spare time, the first of my hobbies so far has been gardening.
The first of the many challenges I encountered as I prepared my garden was the dry, hard-packed ground. Not being one to be shown up by dirt, I attacked it with a pick-axe. Truthfully, I had never before used a pickaxe for actual work. I'm proud to say that I did not knock any holes in my wall, but my northern neighbour and I are no longer on talking terms. So I broke the ground to a depth of around 8 inches, spent another couple of days mixing in 50 lbs of goat manure and rolling in wheelbarrows full of good dark soil, and in around a week or so, had a handful of callouses, a bunch of sore muscles, and my garden-beds ready to plant! As we speak, my beloved Broccoli is already over an inch and a half tall, and my dill, cilantro and parsley have finally begun to sprout.
Next, one of my great ambitions for my time in Mzenga was to build the only pizza-oven in all of Zaramo-land. This turned out to be a little tougher than I expected... it turns out Zaramo homes are made up entirely of mud on sticks, or cement-and-sand bricks. They know nothing of firing clay bricks. So after spending several days searching for anyone who might know anything about brick-firing, I remembered that I had Encarta on my computer, and found out a little. Apparently, good oven-bricks are made of good clay, sun-baked, and then further fired to a temperature of around 1300 C. I'm currently prospecting for good clay, and I think I've found a source. I don't actually know if it's good, but at least it's red. I've also dug a pit in my backyard (about 6 feet by 10 feet) which is where I hope to add lots of dry grass, wood, coal, kerosene, and anything else that I can get my hands on that's flammable (gunpowder? tri-nitro toluene?), and make one big inferno, in the hopes of getting strong, fire-proof bricks. If all goes well, in a few weeks I should have one of the few working brick ovens in Tanzania.
Next, I set my sight on what to put on the pizzas. First among the toppings, of course, was cheese. Not being cattle or sheep-herders, the Zaramo don't actually use milk, and thus, have never developed the art of cheese-making. One of my teammates however, brought along a book on fermentation which I read, and over the next week, I made yoghurt, ricotta/farmer's cheese, and paneer/cottage-cheese out of evaporated milk powder (I'd rehydrated it first, of course). Unfortunately, these fresh cheeses use vinegar-on-boiling-milk as their curdling agent. Since the milk is boiled, however, all the probiotic lacto-bacilli are killed, which make these cheeses unsuitable for ageing. I'm currently in search of 'rennet', the curdling agent with which real cheese is made, and which will curdle milk at around 40 C, allowing the necesarry bacteria to propagate and the cheese to age wonderfully. Once I have the rennet I need, it'll only be a matter of time before I have everything from brie to mozarella to gouda to parmesan (parmesan could take over an year to age). So if you're wondering what would be a good present to send me from yonder rich northern lands where everything is available- rennet, the cheese coagulant, comes to mind!
Besides these, I also try and see what I can cook with the limited ingredients at hand. I've made some decent beef and chicken curries, cheesecake (with the farmer's cheese I made- took me a gallon of milk, which was a good portion of our tin of milk powder, as well as a can of sweetened, condensed milk, and some grated coconut to make a to make a decent-sized cheesecake, but it was so worth it), all kinds of different bean-thingies, mashed potatoes which were half decent, and next on my list is tiramisu, although for that we'd need ladies' fingers (the cookies) from Dar es Salaam. We survive. :P, I'm hoping I can figure out how to make sushi from the stinky, dried-salt-fish they have here.
It's surprising what the lack of other time-consuming distractions will awaken in you. Jeremy's hobbies, he tells me, include sleeping, and shining a flashlight into the cho and describing the various formations he sees to me. It would seem he misses television, the poor guy. He's also taken to playing soccer with the young men in the evening, and has scored 2 goals in the last three practice matches, which is quite the achievement- the average 40-year-old in Mzenga is in the same shape as the average 25 year old in Canada, and the 25 year-olds here all look like professional athletes, but only smaller (the average height must be around 5'6''). Just earlier today Jeremy found out- quite by mistake- that he was quite a good goalkeeper! He was asked to be the goalie at this inter-village match in which Mzenga played the neighbouring village of Chakenge, but he humbly declined, citing his lack of experience. Instead, he was made team coach, and he bellowed and gesticulated like a professional. We (Mzenga) won 5-2. We keep busy!
'Hobbies'
In my former post, most excellent dan-o'-philes, I wrote of all I've been doing and reading over these last few weeks. Well, it turns out that when you have no television, electricity, computers, or people who speak any languages you can understand, you end up with a lot more time on your hands than you thought exhisted in a day. Having lots of time on your hands, as history has shown us, has usually either led to insurrections and revolutions, or to the creation of new and exciting hobbies. Let me tell you about my newfound hobbies:
Some of you may know that while I am in love with New York Style Cheesecake and would elope with it at the drop of a hat; my heart is really torn, for I also have a deep and mellow love for Seaweed Salad, and would have no problems with our being married. However, what you may not have known, is that my love-triangle is really a quadrangle- I also have a long on-again-off-again history with Broccoli. In fact, as the date for my departure drew near, Broccoli and I got more and more possessive of each other, to the point that, when it was time to go, I could not bear to leave Broccoli behind. So I took Broccoli with me- in the form of seeds. I also brought dill, parsley, cilantro, green and yellow beans, carrot, radish and white-onion seeds, but my relationship with all of the latter is purely platonic (honestly, I also happen to have passionate feelings about Garlic. Call me Don Juan de Food-o).
Finding myself with all of these seeds, however, meant that I had to have a garden to be able to cherish and nurture them all, and so, in my spare time, the first of my hobbies so far has been gardening.
The first of the many challenges I encountered as I prepared my garden was the dry, hard-packed ground. Not being one to be shown up by dirt, I attacked it with a pick-axe. Truthfully, I had never before used a pickaxe for actual work. I'm proud to say that I did not knock any holes in my wall, but my northern neighbour and I are no longer on talking terms. So I broke the ground to a depth of around 8 inches, spent another couple of days mixing in 50 lbs of goat manure and rolling in wheelbarrows full of good dark soil, and in around a week or so, had a handful of callouses, a bunch of sore muscles, and my garden-beds ready to plant! As we speak, my beloved Broccoli is already over an inch and a half tall, and my dill, cilantro and parsley have finally begun to sprout.
Next, one of my great ambitions for my time in Mzenga was to build the only pizza-oven in all of Zaramo-land. This turned out to be a little tougher than I expected... it turns out Zaramo homes are made up entirely of mud on sticks, or cement-and-sand bricks. They know nothing of firing clay bricks. So after spending several days searching for anyone who might know anything about brick-firing, I remembered that I had Encarta on my computer, and found out a little. Apparently, good oven-bricks are made of good clay, sun-baked, and then further fired to a temperature of around 1300 C. I'm currently prospecting for good clay, and I think I've found a source. I don't actually know if it's good, but at least it's red. I've also dug a pit in my backyard (about 6 feet by 10 feet) which is where I hope to add lots of dry grass, wood, coal, kerosene, and anything else that I can get my hands on that's flammable (gunpowder? tri-nitro toluene?), and make one big inferno, in the hopes of getting strong, fire-proof bricks. If all goes well, in a few weeks I should have one of the few working brick ovens in Tanzania.
Next, I set my sight on what to put on the pizzas. First among the toppings, of course, was cheese. Not being cattle or sheep-herders, the Zaramo don't actually use milk, and thus, have never developed the art of cheese-making. One of my teammates however, brought along a book on fermentation which I read, and over the next week, I made yoghurt, ricotta/farmer's cheese, and paneer/cottage-cheese out of evaporated milk powder (I'd rehydrated it first, of course). Unfortunately, these fresh cheeses use vinegar-on-boiling-milk as their curdling agent. Since the milk is boiled, however, all the probiotic lacto-bacilli are killed, which make these cheeses unsuitable for ageing. I'm currently in search of 'rennet', the curdling agent with which real cheese is made, and which will curdle milk at around 40 C, allowing the necesarry bacteria to propagate and the cheese to age wonderfully. Once I have the rennet I need, it'll only be a matter of time before I have everything from brie to mozarella to gouda to parmesan (parmesan could take over an year to age). So if you're wondering what would be a good present to send me from yonder rich northern lands where everything is available- rennet, the cheese coagulant, comes to mind!
Besides these, I also try and see what I can cook with the limited ingredients at hand. I've made some decent beef and chicken curries, cheesecake (with the farmer's cheese I made- took me a gallon of milk, which was a good portion of our tin of milk powder, as well as a can of sweetened, condensed milk, and some grated coconut to make a to make a decent-sized cheesecake, but it was so worth it), all kinds of different bean-thingies, mashed potatoes which were half decent, and next on my list is tiramisu, although for that we'd need ladies' fingers (the cookies) from Dar es Salaam. We survive. :P, I'm hoping I can figure out how to make sushi from the stinky, dried-salt-fish they have here.
It's surprising what the lack of other time-consuming distractions will awaken in you. Jeremy's hobbies, he tells me, include sleeping, and shining a flashlight into the cho and describing the various formations he sees to me. It would seem he misses television, the poor guy. He's also taken to playing soccer with the young men in the evening, and has scored 2 goals in the last three practice matches, which is quite the achievement- the average 40-year-old in Mzenga is in the same shape as the average 25 year old in Canada, and the 25 year-olds here all look like professional athletes, but only smaller (the average height must be around 5'6''). Just earlier today Jeremy found out- quite by mistake- that he was quite a good goalkeeper! He was asked to be the goalie at this inter-village match in which Mzenga played the neighbouring village of Chakenge, but he humbly declined, citing his lack of experience. Instead, he was made team coach, and he bellowed and gesticulated like a professional. We (Mzenga) won 5-2. We keep busy!
posted by dan at 9/08/2007 09:29:00 p.m.
1 Comments:
You're hilarious!! Only you can wind up in the middle of an African tribe with absolutely no cooking ingredients and still whip up gourmet meals! You will probably revolutionarize the whole Zaramo eating habits! Glad to hear you're not suffering TOO much anymore by way of food :)
Love sue
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