One of the ways that we are serving our
ministry contacts this month is by cooking dinner a few nights a
week. Our second night here, Jessica (who is hilarious, by the way)
decided that we should cook fajitas, we being her and I. Little did
she know, saying I have no experience in cooking is the
understatement of the year. I do make a mean bowl of blue box mac n’
cheese, but beyond that, I am clueless.
Fajitas automatically means we need
tortillas. They do not exist outside of the Americas. So, instead of
choosing a different dish, we decide to just make them
ourselves…from scratch. We also made refried beans and chocolate
chip cookies from scratch. We had 2 ½ hours.
Meet Nichole, our new found 10-year-old
friend, who was our assistant. Jessica asked her to chop some
tomatoes, and she asked if they should be diced or cubed. When she
pulled out the lettuce from the fridge, she said it was so good to
see good lettuce again. I have never expected to hear those words
come out of the mouth of a ten-year-old; usually they can’t even
stand the sight of lettuce. She worked the whole 2 ½ hours without
one complaint. She didn’t want to taste the cookie dough before
dinner because it would ruin her appetite. Amazing kid.
Neither Jessica or I had ever created
our own tortillas. We looked up a recipe and went to town. After what
seemed like forever, we were covered in flour, but we had some
fabulous tortillas. We even tried to make chips, but they came out
more like elephant ears.
I cooked chicken in a skillet for the
first time, crazy I know. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing,
but it turned out to be pretty tasty, if I do say so myself. I also
made refried beans. Again, I was guessing about what to do, but
somehow they turned out to be edible!
By the time we were done, the kitchen
was a disaster, but we had made a great meal that everyone loved!
These are the memories from the Race
that I will cherish forever…dancing around the kitchen with Jessica
and a 10-year old, and wondering if we were going to have to eat rice
for dinner if none of our food turned out. I learned that I love
cooking, and I would be decent with a little practice. I hope there
will be many more nights like this to come this month!
