Ok, there is something I have to tell you. The 15th September is Costa Rica’s Independence Day, and with the Costa Rican’s being so patriotic, it’s a really big deal!
So when we were told that there was going to be a ‘bring-and-share’ buffet, I immediately thought, “brilliant! That means more food!” Devon on the other hand, being much more mature, quick thinking, and less driven by the idea of consuming food, said, “why don’t we make something as well?”
It sounded like a great idea, and as we could both cook at a reasonable standard, it wasn’t as if we were doing the impossible. So yesterday, after lunch, we went to Eugenio and asked for a cook book to find our ‘piece de la resistance’!
It may well have been in there, but we shall never know because it was in Spanish.
After struggling to decipher the ingredients from the babble, we wisely chose to ask Patri if she had any English cook books, and to our surprise and delight, she did!
Overwhelmed by excitement (and relief at no longer having to attempt to read Spanish) we began to search through the pages for anything that sounded interesting.
It was at that fateful moment when one of us exclaimed, “Ah, look, they even have zucchini bread!” at which Patri wrinkled her nose in an very good imitation of Dad when doing the washing up in dirty water, and said, “bread with zucchini in it?”
And so the challenge had been laid down, and zucchini bread it was.
Now, just a little advice for those of you who are planning to cook for others; at all possible costs, avoid using someone else’s kitchen! Because you can guarantee something will go wrong.
The recipe was simple and we only had to sacrifice the nuts. Patri (laughing at us in exasperation whilst she was doing it) provided us with the ingredients and utensils, and so it began.
And to my great surprise, very little went wrong. I mean all we had done was pour the zucchini juices down a sink that turned out to be not connected and ended up pouring zucchini juices all over the pots and pans in the cupboard bellow. But that wasn’t that bad! All we had to do was rub butter onto the walls of the tin with some flour and it could go in the oven.
Patri picked up the bag of white flour we had used, opened it, frowned and then put it back. My heart sank at this moment and I said, “Patri, why did you put the four back?” to which she answered, “That’s not flour its milk powder”!!!
When I had opened the bag earlier I thought that the flour didn’t look anything like flour. It was almost yellow and grainy. So I had asked Patri if it was flour and she had told me in a very sarcastic tone, “No of course its not!” So deciding it was just weird Costa Rican flour I continued.
So this was going to be interesting, we were going to be providing the community with cake. Now considering that Everybody had wrinkled their noses at the sound of zucchini in their cake, you can imagine what would happen with milk as well!
But fear not my friends, for we had a plan. A plan so cunning, so zealous and brilliant that it had no faults… we would bake another one and I would eat the first. I the end we make three, the good one, the milky one and the combination-of-the-two one.
It turns out; You Can Make Zucchini Bread With Milk!!! It was alright, in fact, it was pretty good actually, so much so that I was only able to steal 2 slices for today’s snacking, as the rest had been eaten! Haha
The whole experience was a great laugh, and it was a new experience for me to have an independence day and realise how important it is to them. That’s the disadvantage of being the conquering nation, you don’t have another excuse to celebrate and eat more food!
