Chef Esteph

If you have read some of other Guatemala entries, you are aware that eating has been a challenge. Well, not some much eating as obtaining food. Mike is quite capable of eating and I’m pretty skilled myself. Well now that we have found food, the challenge is figuring out what to do with it. Some of the ingredients aren’t exactly what we are used to.

Just because it comes in a milk carton doesn’t mean it is milk. On our first trip to the store, I bought a 1 liter carton of chocolate milk to satisfy my chocolate craving. It was the first thing I opened after our half hour walk home. I was disappointed by its thin texture as I poured it into my glass. Even more extreme, however, was my disappointment upon tasting that it was a carton of reconstituted powdered milk. Yuck! As far as margarine goes, the first clue should have been that it was on the shelf, not in a refrigerated case. It has the consistency of paraffin. It requires a good grip on a sharp knife with some serious down-pressure to acquire a piece of the cube. Creaming and spreading just aren’t going to happen with this margarine. Even after melting it in a sauce pan it becomes hard again before you can finish the recipe. Our experience has led us to splurge on a $4 tub of Country Crock. Despite our struggle to find the proper ingredients, I have still managed to throw together some pretty good-looking cakes (and they didn’t taste half bad either). Using all my years of baking experience, I throw together some cake-ish ingredients in whatever food-holding container is available. My most recent creations have contained unmeasured amounts of flour, sugar, salt, eggs, gross powdered chocolate milk, paraffin margarine, and most importantly some pudding mix for flavor. I baked them in the camping pot/ sauce pan that we brought with us. Though they might have been a little dense and rubbery, I must admit I was quite pleased with my creations. Next Wednesday we are having a fellowship night at our house, a special opportunity as ward missionaries. I have been trying to figure out what to make for refreshments. Of course my cakes would be an option, but with only the one camping pan it would take a lot of batches of Esteph Cakes to make a reasonable amount of refreshments. I have changed my vision to cookies. Everyone has shared their traditional foods with us, now wouldn’t it be nice to share some traditional chocolate chip cookies with them? I’ve made chocolate chip cookies plenty of times, so it shouldn’t be that hard, right? We’ve looked all over town for a cookie sheet, but they just don’t exist here. As for the chocolate chips, after looking around a bit, we bought a bag for $4.50. I would also have to either use paraffin margarine or Country Crock because butter is pretty rare and expensive. In other words, I probably won’t be making traditional chocolate chip cookies. I still have some days to figure out something for refreshments…. any ideas? Cake #1 Cake #2 Cake #2 again It's amazing what a little work on presentation can do!