Foraging and Gathering We had seven hungry children, so my wife Sue and I were always looking for special things to feed the horde. Summer meant fresh fruit and that in turn meant canning, preserving, and drying. Wild blackberries were high on the list for jelly-making. One day, we all went to our favorite family spot and picked berries for a couple of hours. We returned home with buckets of ripe fruit. I filled a large pot--and I do mean huge--with some of the fruit. I mashed the berries down a bit and set them on the stove to heat. As they began to break down, I looked for a "jelly bag" and a pan to put below it to catch the juice. I settled, finally, on a king-size pillowcase and a big--we're talking bathtub-sized--bowl beneath. Scanning the kitchen, I looked for some place to hang this contraption. I chose an upper cabinet door that would allow me to put the drip pan on the floor below the bag. I was confident that the door would support the juice and bag and everything. I used a cord to tie and hang it. With a couple of our kids holding the bag open, I dumped the two gallons of hot pulp into the pillowcase. So far, so good. I tied the bag closed. Gently lifting the steaming bag, I tied it carefully over the door hinge and suspended it about three feet above the quickly filling drip bowl. I stepped back, proud as punch, at this soon-to-be-full-year's supply of dark purple jelly. A smile of anticipation and feeling of achievement were welling up in me just as the sturdy cord holding the bag snapped. Twenty pounds of oozing berry pulp hit the bowl of steaming, bright purple liquid. The explosion was unbelievable--pulp and liquid were both going about a zillion miles an hour. Instant dye job everywhere. The ceiling had a perfectly circular stain caused by the splash from the collision of bag with pan of juice on the floor. The ceiling dripped quietly onto the already-purple floor and cabinets. Back then, "splash art" was just becoming popular, and I was trying to figure out how to let the whole mess dry and become "art"--maybe give it a coat or two of lacquer--when Sue walked in to see about all of the commotion. Her gasp made me start to laugh and I ended up laughing so hard, I probably would have rolled on the floor if it hadn't been so darn sticky. That kitchen calamity remains my crowning achievement and the indisputable high point of my home-cooking career. Thank heaven for Clorox. In the mid-1980s, I spent several years working with the Peace Corps in Malawi, a small African nation. Of course people spend a lot of time asking what the strangest thing was that I ever ate in Africa (children especially delight in asking me,"Did you ever eat a lion? A zebra? An elephant?!??"). I think probably the weirdest thing I ever ate there was bugs. Specifically, termites. When the rains came, the termites would come scurrying up out of their holes in the ground. Local kids would come running to my house, take plastic drinking cups from me, and scoop up the writhing batches of termites for me. In exchange for their "harvesting" the termites, they got to keep the plastic drinking cups. Everyone involved was happy with this exchange. I would fry the termites up and eat them over rice. If I didn't think too much about what I was eating, they tasted sort of like Rice Krispies. Sort of. It's June 1998, in Papantla, Vera Cruz, the Mexican city honored as the birthplace of vanilla. Along with the annual Corpus Christi Festival, there are two events scheduled to address ways to strengthen and support the struggling Mexican vanilla industry and to encourage vanilla use locally. I am considered something of an authority on vanilla, so several friends and I have met in Papantla, including a chef whom I'll call Javier, to do the culinary presentations. While it may seem strange that here in the cradle of the vanilla world we've come to teach the locals how to use the flavor and fragrance for which they are famous, the reality is that hardly anyone knows how to use it other than in traditional European recipes. It's a cash-crop, highly revered and deeply respected, but the majority of the local families use synthetic Mexican vanilla, as it's more affordable than pure extract. Vanilla beans are sold in the markets, but are rarely used. The Totonacas --the indigenous people who have cultivated vanilla since the 1200s-- consider vanilla sacred, yet except for using it in a few ritual drinks, it is not incorporated into their cuisine. So it's up to me--notorious in town for having written about Papantla's historical role in the world of vanilla--to lead the way. I've already done one cooking class a few years before where I discovered that my fabulous decadent chocolate cake isn't so fabulous when the temperature is 97 degrees and the humidity is close to 100%. The Papantecos were nevertheless thrilled to have a cooking class in town, and they've waited for an encore. This time I've brought a real Mexican chef, and we're going to do an incredible presentation, hopefully rendering the locals dedicated vanilla users forever. The night before the first event, the family hosting the symposium has arrived in Papantla. There is a fair amount of jealousy and one-upmanship between the vanilla-growing families of these two towns, and under the cordial surface, tensions abound. The people of Gutierrez Zamora have more money and therefore consider themselves above the Papantecos, despite Papantla's historical reputation. Papantla's hosting the meeting, so it's mandatory that everyone have several drinks and eat endless fried bocoles (appetizers) before we can discuss event number one. It's after 10:00 PM when we finally get down to the business of foods to serve the following day. Javier says he is preparing chicken breasts in a vanilla- walnut cream. Slices of freshly baked bread will be served to sop up the fragrant sauce. The hosting family says we should prepare food samples for at least 200 people. They say that there really isn't any time for them to do anything about the food purchase or preparation for us--in fact, they say, they would like us to handle this and to bring everything ready to serve except for the foods we'll use at the demonstration. We are to be there at 10:30 the following morning. I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I had thought that they would handle the details and we'd show up ready to perform. Further, it's a 45-minute trip from Papantla to Gutierrez Zamora. I look to Javier and Tomas, a chef from Arizona whom we have met a few days before. "Is this possible?" I ask. Javier seems supremely certain. "Of course," he says, "We can do it." "The market doesn't open until 7:00 AM," I say. "No problem," he responds. The hosting family gives us a wad of pesos and we say our goodbyes. Javier and I meet in the lobby of the hotel the next morning. Javier wants to light the ovens, but the restaurant is still locked. Not a good sign. The young girls who work in the kitchen have no keys, but they offer to come with us to the market to help us carry back our purchases. We take off across the plaza for the market. Nothing much is happening yet at the market. In fact, when we arrive at the stall where the chickens are sold, there isn't a chicken in sight. It seems they haven't yet been killed. There is, however, a large pig on the counter that is being disemboweled and its bristles scraped off. Javier is pale. "That's a pig," he says in disbelief. "They just killed that pig." "Yeah," I say, "They do this every morning." Then I get it. "You've never seen a pig being cleaned!" I ask. While I may get it, I can't believe it because Javier is from Mexico. "They don't do this in San Miguel de Allende," he says, his voice queasy. "We buy the pig in pieces from the butcher." Well, Javier, welcome to southern Mexico! While we wait for our chickens to be killed, plucked, and dressed, we travel through the market, buying cilantro, onions, lemons, cream, walnuts and other necessities for our meal. We get fresh bread from the bakery. Our assistants take the first round of foods back to the hotel. One girl returns to say the kitchen is open. We return to the chicken counter. They ask how many we'd like. " I'd like 24 whole breasts, skinned," Javier says. "We don't sell parts of chickens," the man says. "Only whole chickens." "Can't you make an exception?" I ask. "No," he says flatly. "How many chickens do you want?" Javier looks dazed. We discuss how many whole chickens to buy. We decide on 15 and ask if they will cut them up for us. They agree, but we have to pay extra, and they definitely aren't going to skin them for us. There is also no concept of cutting chickens in neat pieces. Hacking is the modus operandi. Javier accompanies our assistant back to the hotel with the first three chickens. He plans to get the kitchen set up to cook. You can imagine his surprise when he sees the interior of the kitchen and discovers that there two portable stove tops with two burners each, and an ancient gas stove with only the oven operable. He asks them to start the oven. It doesn't work. But wait, it might work if they coax it along. He returns to the market. "I'll get Tomas," I tell him. Tomas is ready to work, and he and Javier return to the hotel together while I wait with the assistant for the rest of the chickens. It is now close to 9:00 AM, and not one onion has been chopped. Back at the kitchen, Tomas and Javier go into action. It's kind of like the Food Network game show, "Iron Chef," where two chefs are given a pile of raw ingredients and expected to create magic in half an hour. The main difference is that the stoves actually work on the Food Network. Even after considerable coaxing, the oven clearly isn't going to cooperate. And there's something else amiss. These are not American chickens, bred and raised for a large, full breasts and delicate, tender meat. Nope, these are Mexican country chickens. They've spent their lives fighting for grain and grubs, and whatever else that passes by. They've probably been tethered by twine so they won't escape. And they may even have broken loose a time or two to run from dogs and other predators. These birds give new meaning stewing chickens, and they need more than 20 minutes of simmering to break down the sinew and bring up the flavor. The only thing the two chefs have going for them is years of experience in the trenches and a command of the Spanish language. They instruct the girls on the details of grinding the walnuts and skinning the birds, while they make the cheap, dull kitchen knives perform like Solingen steel. I come back with the last of the chickens, then run upstairs to get the notes and display items together for the symposium. When I return an hour later, the chickens have been transformed into a stew, redolent with the smell of vanilla and canela and walnuts. The finished product is not quite what Javier originally envisioned, but at least we know that the flavor is on our side. We ladle the chicken into pots and head for Gutierrez Zamora. The hall where we are to do our presentation is nearly filled when we arrive. It's at least 90 degrees and not yet noon. We ask to see the presentation table. Our hosting family looks surprised. "The stove's in there," they say, pointing to a room off the hall. Javier looks in amazement. "It's a cooking presentation! They're supposed to be able to watch! They can't see us cooking in there," he says. "Haven't you got a portable stove?" The family confers with the people in charge of the town hall. There might actually be a stove, but it will take some searching. Indeed, a stove finally appears, missing its fuel bottle, and without a work table. We give up. Javier puts on his whites and I go to the front of the room. There's a microphone but it can't compete with the overhead fans. Given the heat inside and out, and there's no choice but to keep the fans running. I shout out information about vanilla while two young people pass out cheese sandwiches to the crowd! THIS wasn't in the script. I'm followed by a series of local politicians who speak fatuously about how Mexican vanilla is the best in the world, and if they continue to be elected they will make sure to do something about the fact that the world no longer knows that Mexican vanilla is the best. Finally, Javier is called to the stage. There's no way to do an actual cooking demonstration, of course, so he holds up the raw ingredients and explains his dish to the crowd, who is by now, drinking warm Coke in cans. Regardless of the conditions, the crowd is interested. On the sidelines, Tomas and an assistant scoop stew into sample cups. The bread is sliced. I set up the display tables with everything imaginable made from vanilla. When Javier completes his presentation, the people clamor for the food table. He is a hit, especially with the young girls who flirt outrageously and ask him for his autograph. It is a pretty good ending to a nerve-wracking experience! When I was growing up in New Jersey, one of my family's neighbors did a lot of entertaining. He was as American as I was, but his family was (nominally) of French background, and he was very vain about this. He stopped at a large N.Y. fish market, and bought a bushel basket full of escargots (maybe they aren't escargots until cooked, but . . . ). He put them on the kitchen table that evening, and when the family came down for breakfast the next day, the snails had all gotten out of the slits on the sides of the basket, and were crawling all over the room! Why he didn't put them in the fridge or however it's appropriate to store them, I'll never know. Anyway, they were all over the walls and ceiling, which means they left a slimy residue in their wake. Aside from peeling each and every snail off the smooth surfaces (using a butter knife for the difficult ones), the family then had to scrub down everything, and repaint the entire kitchen. MORE >> BACK TO MAIN DISASTER STORIES PAGE Catherine S. Vodrey is available for freelance writing, editing, fundraising/development, and photography projects at: Post Office Box 835 East Liverpool, Ohio 43920 USA E-MAIL: WordBanquet@gmail.com Thank you for visiting www.WordBanquet.com!