food

The Way to a Man´s Heart is Through His Stomach:
The Key to Forging Successful Professional Relationships wit Host Country Nationals in a Jungle Village.


I was raised in a home where triple chocolate cheese cake and heirloom tomato salsa made regular appearances on the dinner table. The majority of the photos of my childhood involve a freckled redhead sitting on a counter licking batter off spoons and bowls, the utensils of my mother’s culinary genius. My passion, inherited directly from said culinary genius, lies in great food. I do not consider myself a foodie, although I did spend the last several years of my life living in the gourmet ghetto of Berkeley. I would say I have more of a nostalgic attachment to homegrown ingredients and French bakeries. A good vacation was always marked by the discovery of with fresh rougala and my first words were probably Mit Schlag (German for with cream). Sadly, I have found neither rougala nor cream out here in Guatemala. My first three months in training were spent sneaking off and buying lemon pound cake at the only passable bakery in Antigua and I continue to suffer from butter deprivation. The opportunity to cook for myself for the first time presented itself almost six weeks into my time here, when I stayed with a current volunteer. I made German cucumber salad, homemade whole wheat banana pancakes and a vegetable frittata. Sheer bliss.

When searching for a house in Chisec, I had only one requirement: an oven. The house I live in is owned by a man and wife who run a Guatemalan equivalent of a taco truck. This means they have a refrigerator (rare in Chisec) and an oven (I have yet to find another in this town). I knew I’d found a home, ignoring the leaks in the ceiling and lack of hot water. Unfortunately my fantasies of challah every Friday and molten chocolate cakes were harshly interrupted when I discovered that there is no grocery store within two hours. There are a few scattered shops that sell basics like beans and eggs and tomatoes, but the days of bakers sugar and rapid rise yeast are long gone. If I want to buy most ingredients called for in my usual recipes I have to either ask my mother to mail them to me or go to the specialty grocery store nine hours away in Antigua and shell out half my monthly living stipend. Not defeated, I’ve discovered that there are several things that I can make out here with only the ingredients found in Chisec. I’ve adapted a recipe for banana bread that’s been a great hit with the two little boys I live with and I’ve managed to take the surplus of mangoes we’ve got out here, yes this is really the jungle, and the other day I made a mango and plum coffee cake with a cinnamon crumble topping. Baked goods are a currency of sort out here. The first time I opened the oven I discovered the instruction manual still taped inside; the oven had never even been opened. I made a cake for the fourth birthday of one of my host brothers and found myself invited to a party at his grandparent’s house. I taught my host mom how to make banana bread and suddenly I was presented with my very own key to the kitchen.

Realizing the power I now held I decided to make some cinnamon banana bread for first major meeting with my teachers last Thursday. Its difficult holding the attention of a dozen or so young male teachers in 105 degree heat, especially when trying to teach them about the importance of hand washing and teeth brushing, but my banana bread proved magical. I made an agenda for the meeting and included an entire twenty minutes dedicated to eating. The teachers worked diligently in order to quickly get to the snack break and afterwards they chatted away with me, laughing and telling jokes. Suddenly my role in the village has been elevated from lowly public health volunteer to maker of cakes. Who knows what they’ll do when I bring in peanut butter brownies.