I Cooked!

I cooked a couple of dishes for dinner last night and nobody (reportedly) got ill – YAY! Now, obviously, I’ve cooked some before on the ship; I mean, after all, I work in the galley. But last night, we used my ideas and my recipes. Those of you who know me well know I love to cook for people. But 400 people? I’ve been a little reluctant to speak up or even try to figure out how much to make for 400 hundred people. Yesterday while slicing tomatoes, I noticed that we had a lot of green ones. The produce here in Sierra Leone is fabulous: we’ve had amazing, delicious pineapples, papayas, and adorable little green peppers so far and we’ve been in town for less than a week. Well, I got the idea for the fried green tomatoes! After all, I have been living in the south for the last 8 ½ years (ya’ll). So I pitched the idea yesterday. Earnie, the head chef on my team, had never heard of them. Little did I know that I would not only get the go-ahead on the idea, but I was then put in charge of it. There was no corn meal (which is just as well, since I really don’t like the gritty texture), but we made them with regular flour, fajita seasoning (to give it some zip), and eggs and dipped them in the deep fryer. Then we had a butt-load of sliced carrots that I thought was for the salad bar but turned out to be the hot veggie for dinner. Earnie told me to go do something with them so I made Citrus Carrots, based solely on my favorite carrots from John’s City Diner in B’ham. I had no idea really how Shannon makes them so I improvised, based on what they taste like there. Both of my dishes were such hits that the dining room ran out of both of them! Earnie had made some killer shrimp in a sauce with shredded cabbage, bell peppers and onions, which was a hit too. People said it was the best dinner ever! It definitely gave me courage to try some more ideas. Next time, I’m going to cut the tops off the little green peppers, fill them with something, top them with a pinch of shredded cheese and broil them. Lucky for the diners however, that my team is not cooking again until next Monday, huh?

I was so busy cooking and cleaning the pots after that I didn’t get any photos of people eating my food, not that they would have appreciated that much. (Some people are so sensitive when they are eating, you know what I mean?)

Anyway, it’s my first time going into town and shopping this weekend, so I’ll have more on that AND photos later. Plus, if I can get enough people together who want to go to the beach, I’ll do that. The beaches are said to be beautiful but the traffic is so bad here, going out is kind of a pain in the butt and you want to have enough people to make the taxi fare reasonable. Plus, at least two of the beaches are famous for rip tides.