MMMMM Bagels

Things have been looking up at site. I feel far more productive and happy. I spent the past few weeks trying to figure out why. I have a project that’s goings great (a biohuerto behind the health post), I will build my first cocina mejorada tomorrow (4^th of June), I’ve made more time for myself (namely reading the first 5.5 Harry Potter’s in Spanish..I got 2.5 left to go), and the library looks like it might actually exist by the end of the month (cross your fingers). These are all great things. I know they sure make my boss happy-- I’m actually working on steady projects (Can I get an AMEN)! But naw, that’s not what’s improved my productivity and made me at times actually giddy. No, I believe I’ve narrowed it down to one of 2 things:

1.       I increased my chocolate intake

2.       I increased my Bagel intake

Now any female can attest to an increase in chocolate intake will make even the nastiest day seem a heck of a lot better, it’s a natural mood booster; but I’m guessing you’re wondering where I got the bagels from since I’m fairly sure half of you have heard me gripping about the lack of bagels in Peru. Well the chocolate and the bagels are connected. I’ve been teaching all of my cooking knowledge to a family in my community who makes bread.

It all started one famous day (in my site at least). Norma’s 11^th birthday. I was asked to me the God-mother of the birthday party (aka provide the cake and drinks and so on) for Norma’s very first birthday party (the other 10 birthdays went by unmarked). Since I’m A. a cheap, and B. had no intention of paying to go to Chiclayo to pay to buy a cake, I decided to make a cake for Norma. Armed with the knowledge that lemon is her favorite flavor I made a lemon cake and decorated it to say “HAPPY BIRTHDAY NORMA”…but in Spanish of course. The cake was ready and waiting a full 2 hours before the party so I put another pan on top of it and left in on the kitchen table at my house to go and set up the Piñata I made Norma (I know I’m cheap, but she loved it) and make sure all the other food preparations were going well.

With everything in order at the professor’s house I went to go get the cake…and what did I encounter? The family cat, Camacho, having a hay day eating all the icing off the cake. Okay, I knew I’d been in Peru too long when my first instinct (after nearly killing the cat) was that if just the icing was gone, I’d decorate it again and call it a day. But Camacho had eaten the top off the better half of the cake. So now I had 30 minutes to pull another cake, decorated cake at that, out of thin air. I ran around to buy more ingredients and threw another S./10 in the family money pot for the extra gas I was surely going to burn through making the second cake. An hour and a half later, I arrived slightly late (yes an hour and a half is slightly late in Peru…)with the newly decorated cake that was a hit with everyone.

So now I’ve diverged sufficiently that you’ve forgotten why this story was important—It’s how everyone in my town caught word that I can make cakes. Don Elmer and his wife Rosa happened to be at the party with me (they make bread in my site) and asked me if I’d be interested in teaching them how to make the cake. Not being able to pass up a free invite to make sweets I said yes.

We started out baking. I taught them how to bake a lemon and vanilla cake, and then they asked me if I knew how to make alfajores (a Peruvian cookie) and I actually did, so I taught them that. We just made enough for them to eat (I’d help out of course). Then I started getting more requests for birthday cakes and decided that Rosa had a business opportunity that was just too good to pass up. I taught her more cakes, cookies, and pies and referred any birthday cake request to her. We now bake on average 10 cakes a week in addition to 6 dozen individual apple pies and 6 dozen alfajores for her to sell. She’s turning a great profit and I get to bake. Now I don’t do all the baking of course. I make the cake or whatever the first 2 times, the 3^rd I help her or her daughter make the cake, the 4^th they do as much on their own as they can, and by the 5^th it’s their “final exam” and they do it all on their own. Rosa has now mastered the art of: the carrot cake, chocolate cake, vanilla cake, lemon cake, apple pies, chocolate chess pie, banana cream pie, banana bread, orange-nut bread, cinnamon-raisin bread, and quiche. Yes, you read that right, quiche.

When making alfajores you only use the yolk, and one day I had left over pie dough, and decided to put the egg whites to use, I mean I hadn’t had a good quiche in a looong time and the oven was just calling my name. So I chopped up a small onion and tomato and threw in some garlic and salt and pepper. Ta-da a super sensation was created. My town actually likes quiche…who would have thought it. I can’t convince these people to eat raw carrots and they like a quiche? That faithful quiche day there happened to be my usual following there watching (a group of 5-10 mothers who spend their free time watching me cook and talking about how they can lose weight to be “skinny like the gringa”) and I offered them all a piece and it became an instant hit. Who would have thought it?

Now not everything I’ve made has gone over great. One day I found a bagel recipe and decided to give it a go. It didn’t look that hard. I mixed the dough, let it rise, kneaded in cinnamon sugar and raisins, made little bagels, let the rise more, boiled them, and then put then in the oven after the bread. I’ll be darned if I didn’t get a half dozen tasty bagels! Now these were no 9^th Street Bruger’s Bagels of course, I mean it was my first attempt, but I was in heaven. I was eating a bagel. Don Elmer was mocking me because I was the giddiest he’d ever seen me eating my bagel with butter (I made it fresh from the cow). I decided that I’d be nice and share my little slice of heaven with my friends. They didn’t like it. They kept on saying that it was not fully cooked (bagels are supposed to be spongy in the middle darnit!) and they were too chewy. Oh the horror of it all—okay, not really. That just meant more bagels for me! So now I made my half dozen bagels a week, next week I plan on trying to make sesame seed bagels (Don Elmer is going to share his sesame seeds). Now if I can just figure out how to make cream cheese I’d be in heaven.

I tell you, an increase in chocolate and bagels just makes everything seem so much better