Cocinando

I have never been a very good cook.  I have a few things that I used to always make for myself but that’s about it.  Cooking is a very big deal here in the DR.  Cooking for your husband is HOW you take care of your husband.  Every man who gets married gains weight, because now they have a wife who is cooking just for him two big meals a day.  It is such a big part of the culture that if you run into a man who you haven’t seen in a few months and he has noticeably gained weight, the first question that will be asked is if he has gotten married.  Eddy has informed me that the only concerns that his mother had about me when we first started dating was that she was worried because, since I was American , I probably didn’t know how to cook rice.  Since then, even more so after we were engaged, those types of concerns have been ongoing.  And not just from his mom, but also the women that work with us at school, the women at the church, Eddy’s aunts, etc.  They all ask him if I know how to cook, they ask me what I know how to make, and they offer their services to teach me how to cook.  There seems to be a collective effort to keep Eddy from starving.  The married men would also talk to me and joke that they needed to try my cooking before they could approve of our marriage because the other common saying is that you cannot marry a woman until you have tried her cooking.

These comments do not bother me.  After almost two years in the country, I have grown accustomed to the cultural differences and I understand that the comments are never meant to offend me or to be taken personally.  I have also developed a pretty thick skin, and these comments are the least of which I have had to get used to.  However, they do put a certain amount of pressure on me.  I am actually very excited about my new kitchen and that I finally have a fridge that works and an oven.  Although I am learning how to make traditional Dominican meals, I cannot eat Dominican food every single day, so I am enjoying trying new recipes each week in an effort to find American recipes that Eddy likes. One of the major problems in this experiment is that there are many ingredients that I cannot buy here in the DR.  For example one of my favorite dinners is a chicken casserole made with stove top stuffing.  They do not sell boxed stuffing here.  I also wanted to make Eddy rice krispy treats.  No rice krispies.  Not even generic rice krispies.  This is forcing me to go a little outside of my box and make things that I have never made before.

The first thing I tried was meat ball sandwiches.  They were actually a very big hit.  We had four surprise visitors that evening and everyone seemed to like them.  I was very encouraged especially because Eddy never eats beef, only chicken.  Dinner number two was chicken and rice casserole.  I had to play with the recipe a little because I couldn’t find cream of celery or cream of mushroom soup, but I thought it turned out pretty good.  I thought eddy would really like it because it is CHICKEN and RICE.  That’s all he eats.  However, this meal was a big miss.  Although he assured me that it was very well made, he is just not used to that kind of chicken and rice and he would just prefer if I didn’t ever cook it again.  It turns out he wasn’t very hungry that night either because he didn’t eat very much of it.

My chicken parmesan went over a lot better and tonight I am making barbecue (sloppy joes) so we will see how that goes.  I am also hoping to bake some cookies this week and pancakes for breakfast on Saturday (even I had a hard time believing that he has never had pancakes).  Each Saturday we do our grocery shopping.  Last Saturday, I went through my cookbook and made my grocery list.  We took the girls with us for our little outing.  About half way through the store Eddy commented that he had never seen so many weird things together in the same cart.  The girls wholeheartedly agreed.  What are some of these weird things that were in my cart?  Chocolate chips, oatmeal, baking soda, baking powder, instant coffee, brown sugar, peanut butter, vanilla, flour, ketchup, mustard, spaghetti sauce, parmesan, ground beef, boneless skinless chicken breasts, etc.  It was definitely the most American grocery shopping trip that I had ever made.

I am still working on my Dominican meals.  I have plans to visit a lady from our community Bible study again so that she can continue teaching me how to cook.  So far I have only mastered how to make white rice.  Next week I think I will try to focus on practicing a few other Dominican meals and my cart will be full of “normal” things like rice, black beans, red beans, tomato paste, chicken bouillon cubes, garlic, onions, plantains, and yucca.