A preface to this story is describing one of my most beloved friends on the farm, Youri. Youri is from Quebec, and goes to medical school in Montreal, and French is his first language although he is fluent in English and damn good at Spanish as well. Youri and I spend the afternoons working on choreography for our 4th of July performance of Shania Twain´s ´Party for Two´ which should hopefully be coming to a Youtube near you soon.
So when Friday rolled around and I was working in the plant nursery, the Vivero, filling bags of soil to propegate a beautiful pink striped plant called La Lengua de Dragon, or Dragon´s Tongue, my friend Clamencia came to sit with me and keep me company. Clamencia cooks breakfast and lunch for us and the masons during the work week and she is seriously the best cook in all of Nicaragua, without doubt. My Spanish is far from fluent, but it seemed that Clemencia was inviting Youri and I to her house for a sewing project, as she kept saying Sembrar and talking about arroz and dinner afterwards. I happily agreed as spending time with Clamencia over the weekend is an opportunity I wouldn´t pass up.
I was talking to Youri about our plans and it turned out that Sembrar does mean what I thought it did, but not really. Sembrar means to Sow and in to sow rice on Clamencia´s farm on our day off from farming. If this is not a reason to improve my Spanish, I don´t know what is. But, of course, I did not back down and enjoyed an early 7 AM morning with Youri and Clamencia´s family following the men with us who were making holes with their mechanas as we followed, hunched over leaving trails of rice. I planted rice in Thailand in stagnant pools of murky water, where I actually got a leech on me, but here we were just covering more land than is measurable with holes of rice, which will grow successfully since the soil is extremely fertile since it rains so much.
After our work on the rice field and laughing about my cultural miscommunication that I thought we were going to sew for the day, Youri and I were invited to Clamencia´s home for dinner, and we decided there was only one thing we needed to do to prepare and that was to make a cake. Youri carried flour and I successfully carried two trays of about 36 eggs up the side of the volcano without breaking a single one! When we got back to the farm, however, the people who knew anything about baking a cake or making a dutch oven·since we cook everything over an open fire· were all out horseback riding. So, without a recipe, and just with our best intentions, we set out to make a cake.
The cake was.....edible. We burned a wool blanket that we apparently used incorrectly over our pan in the makeshift dutch oven in the process, but we managed to salvage our cake with its weird non·cake·like texture with mango jam and honey.
A huge rainstorm hit right before we walked down to Clamencia´s, 45 minutes late due to the cake Lupe Fiasco, and so clad in headlamps and rainboots, Youri and I made it to Clamencias, where we were greeted by candlelight, as the storm had knocked out the power, and Clamecia´s husband, Martin. A very romantic dinner setting that we spent the entirety of speaking in Spanish, and contributing and following along made me feel extremely accomplished. I will have dreams about Clamencia´s chicken that was marinated to perfection and fell right off the bone for the rest of my life.
After our most eventful day, Sunday came and I was exhausted. I told another friend on the farm, Roxanna, that I would have lunch with her on Sunday with my friend Holly, so that was what we did. Cultural miscommunication number two of the weekend was that I didn´t know that we had to cook lunch. So we did, and even though I felt like I´d done too much cooking for the weekend, Roxanna´s sister Mirta was there and I love her and her kids so that made the extended time in the kitchen better.
I got back to the farm and remembered that my time in the kitchen wasn´t done as I had to cook dinner for the volunteers. My partner in crime for the evening backed out on account of our favorite restaurant in town was serving lasagna , so I was left to fend for myself with a pasta recipe on home made noodles. Cooking for 10 plus people isn´t impossible on your own, but it´s hard. So I recruited Holly to help and our ´noodles´ ended up being dumplings, resembling matzah balls, as we ran out of flour and the dough was super sticky. Youri manned the fire and our disastrous meal turned out pretty great, with dumpling soup in vegetables and beef broth and a salad with honey and mustard dressing and garlic mashed potatoes. Success.
Tired from a work week of hauling rocks to support the rain trenches and too much time spent cooking, a new week has begun and on the agenda is lugging firewood up the volcano and processing it and digging too deep of holes for massive palm and fruit trees. Bring on the muscles.
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