Wales, Spring Break #3: Food

Everyone at the Bahamian dinner. Left to right: Tonia, Jess, Gella, Rocio, Justina, and Pookie

Cousinly love

Gorgeous Gella

Right, so there's no way I'll write this entry without mentioning food. After all, cooking proved to be quite an exciting task for some people, cough, cough.



As college students, we have trained our taste buds to ignore the gross taste (or lack of taste) of cafeteria food, yet once a real tasty meal is put in front of us, our taste buds go wild and enjoy every bit of it! Therefore, we were absolutely delighted by all the tasty meals we had in Wales. Pookie is a great cook! Well, I decided that it was only right for me to return the favor in a way and prepare a Bulgarian meal for the entire family one night. It was a good idea, but its execution was somewhat extreme and way more eventful than I originally planned. What I wanted to make was Shopska salad (can a Bulgarian meal go without it??), tarator (cold cucumber and yoghurt soup - delicious in the summer), and fried potatoes and meatballs (not a great example of a traditional Bulgarian meal, but still a good, easy to make, usually universally tasty dish).



I started off enthusiastically (I was hyper that day - you'll know why in the next post - ah, tension! haha). My first task was to chop up the cucumber for the tarator. I hate chopping cucumbers, yet I didn't want to grate it since it tastes better chopped (in my opinion). I was chopping and dicing until I got annoyed and decided to split the last piece of cucumber into two and eat the two halves. I put them both in my mouth, chewed one of them fine, but I didn't seem to quite chew the second piece. "Fine then, stubborn piece," I told it, "if you're not gonna be chewed, I'll simply swallow you - see how you like that!" I swallowed it, yet there was something wrong - it only went halfway down my throat and didn't want to move. I tried pushing it down with my fingers from outside my throat, but it still wouldn't move. I was trying to act all cool, you know, hah, I can swallow it, it's ok, I just need to take a breath and, you know, try again. This is where I began to panic... I couldn't take a breath! I couldn't speak - nothing! As if my entire throat was vaccuumed! Whoops... I slowly turned to Justina, who was also in the kitchen, but she didn't know that I was having a fight with a piece of cucumber. When I looked at her and she looked at me, I didn't know how exactly to tell her what was wrong so I just made a desperate look and stomped with my foot (apparently, I had missed Choking 101: when choking, you should point at your throat, or simply embrace your throat with your hands - hellooo!). Thankfully, Justina quickly reached the conclusion that I was indeed running out of breath (I was changing colors :), and she rushed to me, made me bend over, gave me some instructions on what to do, and was just about to perform the Heimlich maneuveur when I managed to spit the stupid cucumber out of my throat and into my mouth, take a breath, and then somehow managed to swallow the darn piece again! This time, however, it was only for a short, short time, since I knew how to get rid of it, and I was no longer panicking - I was angry at the piece! Eventually, it ended up in the trash can. Justina was trembling, I was laughing and shaking, and thinking what could have happened if she hadn't been there... Whew. That was so extreme! It was the first time I ever choked and I'm happy it wasn't the last one :) Justina saved my life for which my mom and I are very grateful ;)



Now, if this was a reasonable situation, things would have stopped there. After all, it's not every day that a person almost chokes to death... However, my bad cooking luck still haunted me. I was already on the final stage - frying the potatoes. Pookie has a gas stove - something I am not used to... Where there's a gas stove, there's flame... Where there's flame, there's always the random chance that while trying to get the potatoes out of the frying pan, one would set the napkin which is meant to absorb the grease at the bottom of the bowl where the potatoes go on fire (that was a long sentence, but it was true - guess who managed to start a mini-fire? -That's right, me!). Rocio and Gella were in the kitchen helping me, and while I was rushing to the sink to put out the burning napkin, they were cracking up! :) The fire was out, yet all the smoke rose and spread throughout the entire kitchen. Both the door and the windows were closed, so when Jess entered the kitchen a few minutes later, she said we were going to suffocate by all that smoke, so she opened the door. I continued cooking, and a few minutes later, as you could probably guess, the fire alarm went off. At that point, I was so embarrassed and sorry that my good intention dinner was turning into a disaster. Thankfully, Pookie and the others looked at the bright side of things - at least now they knew the alarm worked.



In the end, we ate slightly burned potatoes, slightly dry meatballs, slightly saltless tarator, and a good Shopska salad - but everyone was polite enough to say they liked the meal :)



Now I have to mention a second dinner which took much longer to prepare but was so worth it! Pookie treated us to a Bahamian dinner. That was so delicious, plus it was deprived of any accidents whatsoever. We had a special potato salad, coleslaw salad, chicken, coconut rice, punsh, and a pasta bake... Mmmmmm, tons of food, but SO good!!! I was really impressed and am considering moving to the Bahamas some day :) Another special feature of the Bahamian night was a whole dance session which included classics such as 'killing the roach', 'exuma', and 'feeling hot, hot, hot' - Charlie's specialty :D



It was lovely and was definitely one of the best culinary memories I have :)