Memorizing Important Creole Phrases

Countdown: 2 days until I leave for Leogane, Haiti, where I will spend eight days helping my church rebuild an orphanage. During the day this week, I try to work and get things done, but it’s pretty hard: Haiti is on my mind.

In the past few days, I’m finishing up the final details before I depart with my team to Haiti. I am limited to a carry-on suitcase and backpack. I also will be checking-in a bag filled either with equipment for the mission or clothes for the children.

A carry-on, by definition of the airlines, must fit in the overhead storage compartments. I’m looking at the list of things that my church, Cornerstone Fellowship in Livermore, California, told me to bring, and I need a bigger suitcase. Checking in a second bag involves cash, which I don’t have to donate to American Airlines.

Mind you, these items aren’t tourist stuff; they are things I need to work on the construction project. My suitcase will have a pair of swim trunks, but only because the ocean is nearby and just in case. The hotel we are staying in does not have a spa to be soaking in at night when we’re done working. The hotel doesn’t have a Web site to tell us about their amenities, but we’re told that not all rooms have air conditioning. I may or may not need mosquito netting. This is Haiti.

So I’ll be taking work boots, long pants, despite the 95-degree and 95 percent-humidity conditions, work gloves, safety glasses, a hat to shield my head from the burning sun, wool socks I purchased just for Haiti, and shirts that absorb the sweat better. I will have to tuck my shirt in, because that’s how those nasty mosquitoes reach your chest and back. We were told the mosquitoes are big enough to ride in some cases. If I’m lucky, the ones who pick me will be in training. Just in case, I have pocket Deet, 18 for the mosquitoes in training and 40 for larger fellows.

Then there are the things I’ll need for the redeye flight to Miami, the layover, and the final leg to Port-au-Prince. I’ll need a sleeping pill for the flight, water for the flight, a few snacks, and reading materials. I’m dressing in shorts for when I land in Haiti and the 95-95. I want to be cool when I land. Is it possible to stuff a cheeseburger into an already crammed backpack?

And then there is the list of Creole phrases given to us. I have yet to memorize any of the terms. A few of them are easy, because there is a similarity to French. “Bonjou” is “good morning,” “Bonswa” is “good afternoon” or “good evening.” “Wi” is “yes” and “non” is “no.”

Then there are the important terms. “Manje” means “to eat.” Maybe I should learn “Be careful of what you eat.” Naturally, I will remember “kwit-manje” because it means “to cook.” “Bwe” is “to drink.” “Mwengendjare,” means “I have diarrhea.” “Mwen anvi vonmi” means “I feel nauseated.” “Quick, where’s the nearest toilet” is not listed on the sheet. “Souple, ban mwen Kaopectate” means “Give me Kaopectate.” “Prese prese!” (“Hurry.”)

I looked, but I don’t see the phrase, “Jesus loves you.” I must find that out.

Now that I’m thinking about it, that’s my prayer request. Pray that I’ll never have to say “souple, ban mwen Kaopectate” while I’m in Haiti. If I never use that term, I’ll be happy.

At our team meeting last week, someone suggested playing Charades, because we may be playing a form of charades when we get down there and try to communicate with Haitians, who speak French and Creole. Do you think Haitians know what the pee-pee dance means? If I’m holding my stomach, and writhing in pain, do you think they’ll figure out what’s going on? I think I can work agony on my face.

I think I’ll keep my list of Creole phrases in my back pocket.

For more photos from Rose Duncan in Haiti, go to this link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=114318335267188529411&target=ALBUM&id=5496243092348559089&authkey=Gv1sRgCJC-75K9yMWoPg&invite=CKHw5egM&feat=email

Learning From Kitchen Disasters

Dinner was supposed to be served at 8 p.m. At 8:10, I was asked when the gourmet cheeseburgers would be on the serving line. “Five minutes,” I said. Then I heard one of my teenage servers say, “Ten minutes. They’ll be ready in 10 minutes.” Thanks for the vote of confidence.

At 8:15, I sent two trays of 20 “gourmet cheeseburgers” to feed the group of 140 single adults at Cornerstone Fellowship’s Dinner for Six on Saturday. Already on the line were chicken and cheddar sausages, Louisiana hot links, macaroni salad and cole slaw. To doll up the burgers, we had grilled onions and mushrooms. The three appetizers had been served up, and my crew was prepping strawberry shortcake for dessert a half hour later.

These weren’t your ordinary, everyday burger patties with a slice of American cheese thrown on at the last minute. These were a cross of four cheeses stuffed inside thick, juicy burgers. The test tastings were phenomenal. I know; I was there.

At 8:30, word began filtering back to me on the grill. “Some people are complaining their burgers are raw.” Ugh. Those are words a caterer doesn’t want to hear. By then, ensuing darkness had exacerbated the problem. The truth is, the burgers were between rare and medium rare, and a few I saw were even medium. It doesn’t matter; the paying customers were not happy.

The problem wasn’t that the burger flipper – me – didn’t know how to tell the difference between medium rare and medium well: The problem was that the grill, actually a smoker, wasn’t keeping its temperature much over 225 degrees. To grill burgers, the barbecue temperature should be between 350 and 400 degrees. Lower temperatures means a longer time on the grill. My tests the previous week, done at 300 degrees on my home grill because that’s the temperature I thought I’d get at the church smoker to from past experience, had the burgers finishing at roughly 20 minutes.

To make matters worse, someone at the church had forgotten to refill its four propane tanks. I was left with one half-full tank and three pretty empty tanks. Twice, the tanks ran out, which caused a temperature drop to under 150 degrees. Time is of the essence in such cases, because food that is cooking is meant to increase in temperature; a decrease is not good, and the local health department sends out “helpful warnings” against such practices. At one point, I found one measly piece of wood, some cardboard, but no kindling or newspaper. I tried getting the wood to burn, because it would increase the temperature to well over 300 degrees. No burn.

During one of the tank switches, the regulator hose was not tightening enough into the tank because the male piece was stripping, and I could hear a leak. One of my workers is a plumber during the week, and he had plumber’s tape in his truck. That fixed the leak. My hero.

Eventually, we started sending burgers back to the kitchen to cook for another 10 minutes in a 400-degree convection oven. That did the trick, but by then, the customers were groaning about having spent good money on lousy burgers. They were ready to listen to the evening’s entertainment, two clean comedians (no swearing, dirty or off-color jokes).

So how can such catastrophes be avoided? I did my homework, because even though I swore I’d never use the hunk o’ junk again, I probably will have to use it again. The answer is making sure at least two tanks are filled before hand, and having a few pieces of wood on hand – plus kindling and lighter fluid. Part of being a good cook is how you respond to kitchen mishaps. Sometimes, that means coming up with a better plan the next time out. Caterers who continue to make the same mistakes over and over will soon be out of business.

Alas, all was not lost. Every time I do Dinner for Six, I try a new recipe, with a few tests under my belt. My barbecue wings (done on the same, dastardly barbecue) were a huge hit. I know because every time we sent a plate out, they came back empty a minute later. All the workers raved about them. Maybe seeing a server with barbecue stains on his lips and shirt was a selling point to the crowd.

Oh, and by the way, as the last batch of burgers cooked, I looked down and could see a flicker of flame from the fireplace and the barbecue temperature was at 325. Nice timing.

To find my barbecued wings recipe, go to my Web site at http://www.dougmeadweb.com. Enjoy.

Follow me on Twitter under DougMeadFood at https://twitter.com/

Who would be the 2010 Chili King or Queen?

Over the years, I’ve watched a handful of cooking contests and laughed at the nervous contestants running around trying to get their food just the way they want it for the judges. Sometimes, it’s funny, sometimes I’m practically in tears when I see accidents derail potential winners. I’ve done the same thing on catering jobs, and it ain’t funny when it happens to you.

The good thing about planning ahead and arriving at 6 a.m. is that at 10:30, 15 minutes before the judging was to begin, I wasn’t sweating bullets and running around like a chicken with his head cut off. All was calm and serene at my cooking booth at the 2010 Rimz & Ribz Chili Cookoff at Cornerstone Fellowship in Livermore, California on July 10.

Those last 15 minutes, I spent perusing the ball scores and sipping on iced tea, pinky up. I was happy with my taste test at 10:30, so I was done adding spices. I kept hoping my chili would thicken up as it cooked, but it just wasn’t cooperating. Bad chili.

To thicken it, I added three separate roux’s, a mixture of flour and oil, but adding any more meant a potential pasty taste. Not good. The only way for it to thicken up was to cook it down over heat. The flavor kept enhancing, but it also broke up my half-inch pieces of chuck steak. It was getting thicker, but for the wrong reasons.

By that time, I had accepted that I had made a fatal mistake in my plans, and there was nothing I could do to change it. Maybe that’s why people on those TV contests are panicking: They realize their product isn’t winning, and they might even start over halfway through the contest. Me? I thought that was my fatal flaw, because texture is one of the judging elements.

My flaw was that my test didn’t match my contest recipe. My tests included beans, but in searching the recipes of past contest winners, I noticed no one used beans. For the contest, I didn’t change the amount of liquid to go into the recipe. Instead of the beans helping thicken up the chili, mine was runny.

As 10:45 neared, the contestants were told to prepare their chili for the patrons to come and try all the chilies, then pick their favorite on a judging card. Before that happened, I set aside the best of my chili in another, covered pot for the sequestered judging panel an hour later.

For $2, each patron – who came to check out the 100-plus cars and to eat a $10 barbecue lunch – received seven little paper cups and plastic spoons to try each chili, then pick one to come back to the one he liked best. Because my beef had broken up, I carefully doled out 3-4 chunks, then added a little chili juice. I felt like such a cheapskate. I kept waiting for somebody to scold me. “Come on: Where’s the beef?”

Slowly, comments started to come back to me that my chili was the best, a pleasant surprise because I thought I had blown it. I knew my chili had good flavor, but it had flaws. One by one, patrons came back to get another cup o’ chili.

Toward the end of the first judging, my mongo pot of chili was quickly dwindling. The contest told us to provide 18 quarts – that’s 4 ½ gallons, and I think I had 4 gallons in my 10 gallon pot. “Please Lord, let your humble servant have enough chili to finish the contest.” I think that was from the Psalms, chapter 151.

And the Lord blessed me, every so minutely. I think I had two quarts left of chili juice, sans meat, at the end. That was going home with me. All I’d had of my own concoction was perhaps 20 itty bitty teaspoonfuls for tastings.

After the initial judging ended, we had 15 minutes to prepare our judging packages. For me, all that meant was getting my chili boiling for five minutes, then putting it in the container and taking it to the judges.

Unlike the judging you see on TV, no one was running around frantically at this judging. Maybe it’s because our winner’s checks were only $50 for the patron judging and $150 for the official judging, whereas on TV, some of those contests have multi-thousand dollar prizes.

While we waited, I cleaned up. My station returned to its containers and into my car for the return drive home. (Actually, I had to drive to Pleasanton for a three-hour meeting for a mission trip I’m making to Haiti at the end of July.) I just wanted to go home. I was justifiably pooped after getting up at 4.

Thirty minutes later, I was warned they were ready to announce the winners. No butterflies in my stomach, no fingers crossed. I wasn’t praying for victory. I had fun, and that was my number 1 goal. I was sitting with a friend talking about the events of the day.

Then they announced me as the winner. It took me all of 10 seconds to get to where the announcer was standing, and by the time I got there, he had moved on to the next gift certificate winner. I looked around, dumbfounded. Is this it? I’m the 2010 Rimz & Ribz Chili Cookoff King, and this is all I get?

So I headed back to my table, head down. Then the coordinator cornered me. “You won both judging categories, which means $200. We’ll send you a check. Thanks.”

So, that’s it. I am officially the Chili King of North Canyons Parkway. Next year, I hope to defend my crown. And though I didn’t win a trophy to add to my second-place tamale contest trophy from 2004, I plan to get a gold tiara with purple lettering and wear it to church for the next month or two. Hey, I earned it.

Stories About Food and Faith

Food should be fun. Food should be shared with friends and family. Food should be about feeding those who are hungry. I believe all those things should combine with our faith in God, because he is the creator of us and the food we eat. That’s what this blog is about. I want to tell you my stories about food and how I became the person I am.

I grew up on a farm in Arizona, surrounded by golden wheat stocks, crisp lettuce, sweet cantaloupe and thousands and thousands of cattle. My brother and I used to fish for catfish on the Colorado River a mile from my house. My first memories of cooking was of my grandmother and her fried chicken. I fell in love with Mexican food because the farm I grew up on was 30 miles from the Mexican border, and most of my dad’s laborers came from south of the border. Those guys used to bring the most scrumptious little burritos and sell them to us gringos for 50 cents apiece. When I got to college, I was the only one of my four roommates who could cook. I quickly found out that girls would pay for the food if I cooked on Friday nights.

Then cooking just sort of took a hiatus for 10 years after college while I focused on my newspaper journalism career. After my divorce in 1994, cooking became a hobby again. I baked at 1 a.m. when I got home from work. I started cooking healthy meals for my son, so he wouldn’t have to eat from box mixes and frozen junk. In the singles ministries I led in various churches, potlucks became a regular part of our gatherings. On campouts with single-parent families, we kept chili or stew hot on the fire, ready to feed families as they arrived. While mom and the kids chowed down, the guys would pitch their tent and make them feel at home for the weekend.

I started catering in 2004 with “Awesome Salsa & Guacamole,” mostly to make ends meet as a single dad. My son, one of his buddies and me would work a 10-foot x 10-foot screened area at art and wine festivals on weekends. I got to write about some of those adventures through a regular column in the local newspaper. My church started asking me to cater dinners. I wasn’t much with a hammer and nail on those roofing missions to Hackberry, La., but I sure could feed the troops some mighty fine grub. I even met my wife through food; she attended a dinner I helped cook at my church. Now we work together to cater that same monthly dinner.

Along the way, I began to see that food was a gift from God, given to us to, not only enjoy, but to relate to each other. In the Old Testament, the Israelites called their gatherings “feasts” or “festivals.” In the New Testament, Jesus seems to feel pretty comfortable slipping off his dusty sandals and eating a hardy meal every night with either saints or sinners – or both. He seemed rather irritated that his mom dragged him away from his friends to turn water into wine – the best wine. The last gathering with his disciples was over coal-baked fish on the beach for one last meal with his buddies. Sounds like he was having fun.

The Bible uses food countless times as metaphors for life. The Israelites ate manna falling from the sky. Fishermen, shepherds and farmers played key roles in biblical stories because they were simple and hard-working. The early sign of Christians was that of a fish. Jesus himself said, “I am the bread of life.” Sure seems to me that God gave us food to send us a few messages.

Food wasn’t meant to be bland, or else he wouldn’t have given us salt and dozens of other spices mentioned in the Bible to “flavor” food. He wants us to experience life abundantly. Get my point? Every time I cook, I see God, smell God, taste God and sense his presence as I cook, whether on my backyard barbecue, in my church’s kitchen or on a mission somewhere in the world.

Join me on this journey about faith, family, friends, feeding the hungry and having fun – all tied together through this wonderful thing we call food.

On Saturday, I'll be participating in a Chili Cookoff. Come visit me. You can find the necessary info at this link:

http://www.cornerstoneweb.org/livermore/events/events/Rimz_Ribz_2010.aspx