Monday, February 1, 2010

The Joy of Cooking (on a rusty hotplate)

There are quite a few things I took for granted in the United States. Not the least of which are reliable kitchen appliances (it’s not that they don’t have reliable kitchen appliances in South Africa, they do, I’m just talking about my living situation in particular). There’s the refrigerator that occasionally and randomly decides to make a sound like it’s taking off, perhaps to orbit the earth or even make a pilgrimage to the moon (the sound may or may not be related to my kicking of said refrigerator in frustration at the unreliability of other appliances or the perpetual presence of ants and cockroaches that treat my kitchen like some sort of insect Mecca to which they travel many meters or even dekameters [that’s 10 meters, for the metrically challenged] against torrential rain and wind to find their way under my door, across my cement floor, and into the promised land of my tiny kitchen). The refrigerator, although seemingly eager to exit the Earth’s atmosphere, is, of course, my newest and most reliable appliance.

 Then there’s my electric hot water kettle, ubiquitous in South African kitchens. It’s the type of kettle that you plug into the wall and hit a button and it’s supposed to boil water faster than you can say Starbucks Readybrew Singles. However, my particular kettle is a bit inconsistent to say the least. One time I will throw the switch and it will immediately kick on a begin heating the water (to which I respond with a Masters or US Open-winning-putt-appropriate Tiger Woods fist pump, a practice that I began before all the Tiger scandal stuff), and the next time I will turn it on the kettle and then ten minutes later I’ll hear it kick on (responded to with a Buick Open-appropriate fist pump). There is a third process, in the common event that the previous two scenarios don’t occur, for heating water that requires a sacrifice to the pagan god of electric water kettles (or goddess, which may be my problem, I don’t know). If that doesn’t work, I either have to convince myself I don’t want tea or coffee or go next door to the office and use the kettle in there. Then I give sort of a finally-my-practice-round-is-over-appropriate fist pump and enjoy my coffee or tea, or not.

 So what else? There’s the microwave, which is conveniently located in the office next door, which requires the unlocking of my two locks to get out, locking one behind me so someone doesn’t sneak in while I’m defrosting my chicken or heating up leftovers (‘cause you never know), unlocking the two office locks, then reversing the process to get back in. I, naturally, usually end up leaving what I was supposed to microwave in my place to begin with or in the office when I leave. The microwave, however, despite the counterintuitive knobs and buttons, has yet to fail me. Plus, I commandeered it while the office is closed for the Holidays (muh ha ha) so it’s in my place for the time being.

 Moving on, past my behemoth of a water purifier and my disappearing toaster, we come to my front-loading washing machine, or as I like to call it, 100 percent of my counter space. Washing machines for clothes are generally not considered kitchen appliances, but mine is located in my kitchen so it counts. I was initially ecstatic that I actually had a washing machine in my place, but I soon learned that washing machines don’t magically synthesize water from the sky, and that the nearest suitable water source is either Victoria Falls or the Atlantic Ocean. Okay really the nearest water source is my kitchen sink, which naturally has completely the wrong sized faucet to use it for my washing machine. I can also run a hose from the outside valve, in through my kitchen window, over the river, through the woods, bypassing grandmother’s house, and to the washing machine. This would work great if it weren’t for the fact that they are evidently against reliable garden hoses here and instead go for random bits of flimsy tubing usually held together by a combination of wire, twine, and prayer (they don’t have duct tape, hence the prayer requirement). I have attempted to remedy each problem. I made an attempt to adapt my kitchen sink faucet using a combination of plastic bags, duct tape (brought from home), and, yes, prayer. I felt like the guys in Apollo 13 when they needed to figure out how to adapt that one thing to the other thing to save Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and the other guy. My contraption was foolproof, until I turned on the tap and water proceeded to spray all over my kitchen. My attempt to run water from outside into my window had nearly identical results. I’ve given up on the washing machine for its intended purpose. It’s now used as 100 percent of my counter space, since my kitchen has no counters.

 That brings us to the crown jewel of my temperamental kitchen appliances. The hotplate. In all its glory. Nope, I don’t have a stove. Nope, no oven. I have a rusty hotplate that sits on the aforementioned washing machine/counter. This hotplate has two burners and two settings: unplugged (off) and plugged in (on). There are knobs, which to my knowledge are only there for aesthetic purposes, because they really don’t do anything. Fortunately, one burner is hotter than the other, so when the recipe says “reduce heat” I see it as “slide from the left burner to the right.” However, not being able to control the heat of cooking other than pulling the burner switch-a-roo is a challenge. I’ve abandoned cooking eggs any way but scrambled (where 68 percent of the egg sticks to the pan, which I believe to be the polar opposite of “nonstick” pans, I have “stick” pans, I guess), and even the most simple food known to man, the immortal grilled cheese sandwich, is no easy task. The drunkest person in the world can make a perfect grilled cheese sandwich on a stove with a Teflon pan, but with my hotplate and my “stick” pans, I can be completely sober, motivated, and in broad daylight, and end up with a pile of mush that hardly resembles anything close to a sandwich, or food for that matter. The joy of cooking, indeed.

I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into my life as a missionary. I am in no way complaining. I’m merely making observations. I apologize for the insane number of parenthesis I used and I jut remembered that “the other guy” in Apollo 13 is Bill Paxton, best known for not winning an Academy Award for Twister, which will go down as one of the greatest snubs in history. Now to go make some dinner, or try to.