Cooking at its Finest

So this weekend, we hosted a big party in honour of our Country Director as she is leaving her position here. In preparations, we figured that there could be up to about 90 people attending for dinner. This post is dedicated to the absolutely AMAZING cooks that we have here at the Jabi base.

Just to give you an idea of what our kitchen is like and the type of conditions our cooks are cooking in. Our kitchen is about 10 feet by 6 feet large (with an extra little bit for storage area). This space has in it already, two counter tops and a large cupboard. One counter is virtually all taken up by our 2-burner gas stove that we always have here. The second countertop was taken up by a second stove that the ladies borrowed from somewhere (?). Remember... these ladies are cooking for 90 people. All our 4 cooks came on Saturday and brought 2 extra helpers with them. They prepared a FEAST. HUGE bowl of rice, chicken, fish, veggies, eggs, peanut sauce, more veggies, these cool little rice patties wrapped in banana leaf, or something and much more. You also must understand that Indonesians do not eat bland food - it is all well prepared with a LOT of flavour and a LOT of spice.

You should have seen these women labour. Virtually all six of them in this tiny 10x6' kitchen, chopping veggies on the floor (with cutting boards), cooking on the burners, in 30+ degree weather with high humity, gas burners going and not a whole heck of a lot of air flow in there. UN-BELIEVE-ABLE. I shall never complain about lack of kitchen space again!

Oh yeah. and by the way. The kitchen sink is not in the kitchen. you have to walk about 15 feet and around three corners to get to it. And our fridge was broken, so they had none.

Every time I walked by these ladies, I was so amazed and felt so humbled by the way they worked. And honestly. The food they prepare tastes really, really great.

They also rented extra glasses & plates, made a huge tub of some kind of watermelon juice and managed to keep smiles on their faces the whole time! Remarkable.

One of the things that's kind of sketchy about their cooking is when you get the chance to see them preparing the chicken. Not a really great sight for all us "Food Safe" Westerners, but they fry the heck out of it anyway, so it tastes awesome. :)

I really wish I had remembered to have my camera around, but I didn't, so I hope you can all use your imaginations. I was so impressed and amazed by the work of these women. I have no idea how to honour them for their hard work, here in this culture, so I thought that if many more people knew about their service, they'd somehow feel blessed.