If it seems I have fallen off the face of the earth this week, I haven’t. Its just been a busy, crazy, wonderful, falling down nutty week–full of activity and drama. There was hockey to watch and sob over, live music to go see, a sweet 6 year old boy to cuddle, and an amazing party to plan. I can’t wait to tell you about this last one but its got to happen first. I am almost afraid to speak of it, for fear that I will somehow attach some expectation to it that will just ruin it for me.
I remember when Juan’s Tio Gordo and Tia Fidelina built their new house. It was a spectacular house in a modest village–two stories high with balconies dripping with bougainvillea. People came from 5 villages away to see it, to celebrate its birth. We too went down to Veracruz for the house blessing. The event was bigger than a wedding and wonderful in all the ways that happy occasions are but I personally found the rituals around the party were more delicious than the party itself. There was the shopping for the perfect ingredients, the purchase of a big spoon worthy of a witch’s cauldron, to stir mole for 500 over an open fire. There were two nights straight of cooking, grinding corn, cooking mole over coals, forming tamales by hand. There was the afternoon setting up the stage for the band. And then the magical party itself.
Its gonna be like the next few days. It started today as we passed emails around, solidifying our plans. Tomorrow Odette and I will rise with the sun, get Max off to school and we will start to shop and then chop. All afternoon sisters will come in through our front door wielding knives and will join us in the chopping, the wine, the singing. Then at 6 we will take our food to store in a big industrial fridge at the photo studio where we will work to set up our fete. Ten of us will drag tables and lights and music equipment around and transform a photo studio into something else. When we wake the next morning there will be more cooking, more running to the liquor store, more final preparations. And then there will be a party. A party for a very special woman, my housemate Odette. A simple and beautiful person who walked through our magic door and changed all our lives in ways we cannot even begin to explain, ways we are all still trying to understand. Bands will wander on and off stage, bread will be broken and wine will flow and in the end, we will have raised money for her girls, preparing them a home for a someday soon reunion, building them a family to walk into, preparing them a place of rest.
Thinking about it all I just feel giddy and grateful.
What are you looking forward to this weekend?
a pile of sambusa ready for the frying pan
The day my housemate and I delivered mandazi to many of our beloved neighbors, we were sitting in Jackie’s kitchen. “I need to learn how to make these,” Jackie said.
And so, our idea for my housemate’s cooking classes began. She is a trained chef from Central Africa and cooks amazing and beautiful meals. She is so powerful in the kitchen. While she is there, 
working and singing I want to sit at her feet and listen to her lilting voice, listen to the chop chop chop of her knife. She transports me back to a time and place I never knew I missed, but now I long for like a child separated from home.
On Saturday night we piled into the house–6 beautiful women. She gave us each a chef’s knife, a cutting board and instructed us in proper technique. We giggled and gossiped and the kitchen started to smell of ginger and curry and garlic. The spices were as thick as the laughter.
Sambusas are fried meat dumplings and are, when made completely from scratch,complicated affairs. There is the meat which must be cooked and seasoned and then the envelopes that must be made–flour and water mixed to the right consistency, kneaded until stretchy and soft, rolled out to the perfect thickness, cooked but not too much, trimmed, cut, folded and stuffed before they are dropped in oil and fried.
Making sambusa is a kind of meditation. And an expression of love. To stand in the kitchen and go through so many difficult steps to arrive at the perfect meat dumpling is something you would only do for love. For love of the diners perhaps, or love of cooking itself. But it is not a task one takes on lightly.
My mother-in-law lives in rural Oaxaca and cooks this way. Each tiny step executed patiently in its own time. There is no rush to get the food on the table. The grinding of the chilis, the crushing of the tomatos, so much better done by hand. “That is how the love gets in,” she would say. “Love is the most important ingredient.” It seems like in our rush rush rush convenience society it is a critical nutrient that too often gets left out of our diets. No wonder we are so malnourished these days.
As we sat down to dinner at 10 pm, a luxury for all of us with small children, the love seemed to seep out of the food. Each bite was glorious. I sat back from the table full and yes, completely nourished.
