An American Dinner

August 2nd, 2009

After having French cuisine for dinner one night, my parents joking asked if I wanted to prepare food. I think they were pretty surprised when I said that I would. I think they were even more surprised when I actually followed through.

To start out I had to buy everything at the market. The food market is open air, with rows and rows of vendors selling vegetables, spices, medicine, and random other things. Almost everything is sold on a tarp that rests on the ground, which provides at least some sort of protection for the dirt, dust, and who knows what else that covers everything.

I went to the market with Bernadette to ensure that I am not getting too ripped off. Besides the spaghetti itself, tomatoes and lettuce are the most expensive for the quantities that I want to buy. Most everyone is friendly, giving me a crooked smile and a few kind words with each transaction. I’m not looking for too many ingredients. I’m making a salad with lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and peppers, a salad dressing with oil, vinegar, mustard, and pepper, garlic bread, and spaghetti with spaghetti sauce with garlic, onions, peppers, spinach, tomatoes, and spices. It takes about an hour to buy everything.

The first thing I do when I get home is wash everything, cut them up, and wash them again. Bernadette helps me with this. There are no cutting boards here and the knives are incredibly dull. Initially I’m a little annoyed at how hard it is to cut things, but I am thankfully for their dullness when I find myself using my hand as a cutting board.

A can of kerosene with a burner attachment serves as my stove which works fine for the spaghetti and sauce, but eliminates any possibility of toasting the garlic bread. After an hour or so of work, dinner is served.

I tell everyone to come to the table. I’ve prepared enough chairs that Bernadette (18) will get to sit at the adults table, and have enough chairs and places at the kids table that Belguisa will get to eat as well. There is a place for everyone. I tell everyone my plan. Faniel (3) comes to sit at the adults table. “Faniel isn’t a child” says my mom. I grimace.

Faniel eats, and drinks everything with us, including alcohol. In fact the little guy drinks more than I do. Every night we have beer he inevitably ends up drunk. Those nights I go to bed early and listen to my iPod to drown on the sounds of his angry demands, crying and general screaming. I’ve started to tell my mom that alcohol is not good for kids, the first thing I have told her that I know she doesn’t want to hear. As I’m paying for the entire meal on my less than meager trainee’s salary, there is no beer tonight.

After everyone is seated, I serve the salad first. Spinach? In the salad? What a bizarre concept. Spinach, probably the most vitamin-rich vegetable I’ve seen here is very cheap here and looked down upon. My mom asks me for more, but asks me only to give her the most expensive ingredients, lettuce and tomatoes. The dressing, which didn’t quite turn out as planned due to the scarcity of mustard and the fact that I used all the pepper in the sauce actually tastes better than I thought it would. A mixture of oil, vinegar, mayo and salt, it tastes better to me than our regular dressing of oil and mayo. Everyone seems to enjoy it.

Next comes out the garlic bread, which turns out to be a huge success after an initial bump when someone dumps a ridiculously large quantity of the garlicky-oily mixture I prepared over their piece of bread. I bring out the enormous pot of spaghetti next, I’m made close to two pounds for the thirteen people that are eating tonight. My mom looks at her plate skeptically. I can almost read the question in her eyes. Where is the oil?

Everything here is doused in oil. Spaghetti soaked in oil, rice in oil, oil macaroni, fish with fish oil in oil, and oil in oil. Well maybe not the last one. I look down at my plate, no oil in site. It looks great.

No longer paying heed to the world, I dig into my plate. It tastes delicious. I eat until I can’t anymore and am surprised that almost everyone seems to like it. My sisters come back for thirds, something I have not seen in my two months here. I’m quite pleased with myself.