Two things happened recently.
First, I became even more lazy in the kitchen than I had been for the last two years. I used to veto any recipe that took more than half an hour, but anymore, cooking for longer than ten minutes feels like a waste of time. (Which is strange, because now that school is out, I have quite a lot of time to waste.)
Secondly, I read some pseudo-scientific article suggesting that people should stop eating carbohydrates for dinner, since carbs are an energy source and most of us don't do much marathon training after supper. Is there any validity to this theory? Probably not, but in trying to come up with something quick and carb-less, I accidentally made this one-pan casserole-type... thing, and then made it again the following night.
Maybe I have low standards. Maybe it's genuinely delicious. It's for you to judge.
Ingredients:
- One ear
of grilled corn (100 francs at the village market)
- One
ripe avocado (50 francs at the market, about 10 feet behind the woman selling
corn)
- Two
wedges of Laughing Cow (one package of 8 wedges purchased for 900 francs in Ngaoundere,
though everyone here calls it Vache Qui Rit)
- Half a
can of refried beans (procured via a very generous care package from my beloved
grandfather)
Instructions:
- Heat cheese-type
product with a small amount of water on low heat until it has melted into a smooth sauce.
- Add beans and
combine.
- Remove the kernels from the corn with a serrated knife, and drop kernels into the bean-cheese
mixture.
- Cut the avocado
in half, remove the pit, and spoon the fruit into the cheesy corny bean stuff.
- Enjoy!
I
admit, it looks remarkably like something my cat might regurgitate, but it
tastes like a fiesta!
Bon appétit! Or, you know, however you say that in Spanish.
“All
books reveal perfection, by what they are or what they are not.”
Christopher
Moore, Lamb
Selfishly,
one of the things I was most looking forward to when preparing to leave for my
Peace Corps service was the amount of time I could dedicate to reading over the
course of two years. Honestly, I was sort of hoping that they’d put me in a
village with no electricity so I wouldn’t have any distractions from the
hundreds of books I imagined myself reading. Though I’ve been a stereotypical
introverted library-bound nerd since the age of six, studying literature at
university only made me hyperaware of the sheer number of works I hadn’t yet
read, so in the weeks leading up to my departure, I scoured Amazon for
inexpensive and essential books to load onto my Kindle, hoping to fill in
certain gaps in my education (Anne Frank’s diary was one of the first books I
read in Cameroon) and sample genres I had heretofore avoided (science fiction,
for instance).
I can’t
claim to have read an astonishing amount here; another volunteer has read 50
books in the last eight months, whereas I read that number in all of last year.
I do wish that I’d read more over the course of the last two years, but there
were a number of days when, after teaching or correcting tests, re-watching The X-Files just seemed so much more
comforting than reading a pre-Columbian history of the Americas. (Update: After
nearly three months, I finally finished Charles Mann’s 1491.)
Has
this attempt to read a book a week made me a better or more intelligent person?
Probably not, though I certainly have more fun facts to drop into conversation
at cocktail parties. I do it partly out of fear of intellectual stagnation:
It’s now nearly five years since my formal education ended, and while I no
longer have somewhat-easy access to brilliant professors, I want to try to
recreate that sensation of having a conversation which forces its participants
to dissect their own thoughts. This desire for ongoing education is probably
what has driven me to stray from fiction, leaving me feeling as though I’m
cheating on my literary background as I try to ground myself in the “real”. As
I reach the end of my service, I’ve finally devised a compromise: At any given
time, I’m reading at least two books, one fiction and one non-fiction. One
keeps me factually attuned to the world around me; the other, I like to think,
forces me to practice a certain level of empathy with the characters I
encounter.
I’m
certainly in no position to make recommendations, as I’ve barely scratched the
surface when it comes to masterpieces of the written word, but here, in no
particular order, are a few books I’ve particularly enjoyed in the last two
years. These are beautifully written works of prose, all of which enchanted me
and some of which put words to feelings I hadn’t adequately described to myself.
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale
Hurston
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
The End of the Affair, Graham Greene
Just Kids, Patti Smith
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki
Murakami
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara
Kingsolver
Contact, Carl Sagan
Although I only have two months of service left, I plan to spend much of that time reading, and hope to keep reading a book a week when I return to the States, so feel free to leave recommendations in the comments.
