Cooking with Fire
Usually when I think of cooking with fire, I've thought of having a gas vs an electric stove or better yet we're about to bbq and the cookout is about to be lit. One the things that I've noticed in Chel, a municipality of Quiché, Guatemala is the care and attention the simple and necessary parts of life require. It’s understood that things take time and the slower pace of life there was illuminating for me.
First of all an estufa (stove) is not a given. It's kind of a luxury from what I understand and from what I can tell because not everyone has one. To use the stove, one must use fire and there is no switch that gets turned on in the way a gas range works. The wood has to be cut which is usually done ahead of time so it's available to start the fire when it's time to cook. Now, keep in mind if you get preoccupied or something else takes your attention and your fire burns out, you start again. When dinner depends on it, there is no other option because there's no microwave or standard electricity or UberEats or pizza available to make it any faster.
We had stopped in the town earlier and planned on having sopa (soup) with chicken and cebolla y huevos (onion and eggs) and a few other delicious ingredients. But, it was a long day and the fire had already burned out once. You know how it is when you have a master plan for dinner and one thing leads to another and the goal quickly changes to simply getting everyone fed, satisfied and ready for bed. In spite of getting started late we prepared beans, half a chicken, tortillas and pan. A few had coffee after dinner. But that too required fire. How else would one have coffee without hot water?
La cocina (the kitchen) which I always affectionately refer to as the heart of the home.
I'd also noticed that each day we bought fruits, verduras (vegetables), meat and pan. I enjoyed being out and about each day, going from vendor to vendor to see what they had for the day but shopping everyday for the meal of the day was new for me. I asked about it and it was explained to me there isn't refrigeration even at homes in the city and for that reason there's a lot of cooking that goes on. Most families make enough only for each day because otherwise the food would go bad.
By this time, la cena (the dinner) was done. I noticed during the eating part of the meal everyone was quiet. I suppose it's the same in every culture. When hunger is present and food is set on the table, there's nothing to talk about. Once appetites were quenched, after dinner conversation was lighthearted and Sofia and Lucy told stories of other trips they'd taken and some of their misadventures in bringing early education programs parts of the country where saying they aren’t the most accessible would be an understatement. We laughed.
Making dinner that night was a simple task and by local standards a quick meal. Some of my best memories ever involve making meals with friends and family and we’ve often spent full days preparing and cooking for the main meal or event. Learning to cook in this new way left me feeling appreciative as we ended our conversation and straightened the kitchen, I said "vale la pena” (it’s worth it)!