Cooking with Blair and Liza

September 1, 2008

One of the highlights of having Liza on the island for Face to Face is that we make dinner together almost every night. Liza is a pretty ideal dinner collaborator: catholic in her appreciation of all vegetables except bitter tomatoes, which we both know are gross; willing to indulge my own aversion to cooked cabbage; enthusiastic about onions, garlic, salt and Jumbo; happy to chop and wash up; and not too picky about a little dirt that might have gotten on the food from its time in the fields (or on my floor). After almost 5 weeks, we’ve gotten our nightly meals more or less down to a science. Want to know the X easy steps to cooking a Blair & Liza special? Of course you do.

1. Send whoever’s not teaching to the market. Buy some combination of tomatoes, garlic, tomato paste, onions, eggplant, squash, and sweet potatoes. Make sure the tomatoes end up on the bottom of the bag.
2. Wait til evening.
3. Unpack the grocery bag. Be surprised yet again that the tomatoes have started preparing themselves.
4. Chop an onion.
5. Fry the onion.
6. Chop the garlic.
7. Decide you should really put in 2-3 more cloves. Chop those too.
8. Add the garlic to the onion.
9. Add whatever the other person has been chopping while you’ve been taking care of the onion and garlic. Fry some more. Add salt.
10. Add water.
11. Squeeze something (tomato paste, moutard, peanut butter, exciting stir-fry sauce from home or Kombo) from a bag into the pot.
12. Add lentils, beans, or soy bits.
13. Wander out into the backyard. Toss vegetable ends and washing water over the fence. Pick some moringa.
14. Add moringa to the pot. Figure that the stems are probably good for you. Add salt.
15. If you are cooking beans, wonder when they will be done.
16. Wait for the beans. Talk about work, what we should cook tomorrow, and what tv-on-dvd we should watch tonight.
17. Taste a bit. Wonder when the beans will be done. Add salt.
18. Repeat steps 16-17 until you’re too hungry to worry about the degree of tenderness of your legumes. Decide it’s done.
19. Put the pot on the floor. Fan and stir until you’re too hungry to care if it burns your tongue a little.
20. Eat. Wonder how you will finish the pot between just 2 people. Add salt. Fan.
21. Get down to the last 5-8 bites. Bully each other into finishing, or dig around for your Tupperware. Stow Tupperware in the jibida, where you will bump against it as you scoop water out the next day, causing you to wonder what thing you don’t want to deal with has entered your jibida.
22. Do the dishes.
23. TV time!