churrasquear

Churasquear means:

you stick a bunch of coals and leaves and fatwood and pine needles and other dry-looking shit into the mouth of the brick kiln grill-thing out back and use three packs of matches trying to light it. At one point pour cusha (moonshine-y liquid) on half of it, thinking that alcohol will make things more flammable, when in fact it just makes things damp. despair a bit. by some miracle of wind and an unexpectedly large burst of flame from a spastic lighter, get the damn thing going. watch flame shoot out from several unexpected grill-orifices. have an insane I-am-lord-of-the-elements power trip for a few minutes, then start putting together things to actually cook.

roast the tomatoes from the street market (earlier: be outraged at the price of tomatoes, but buy them at 6Q a libra anyway because a churrasco without chirmol is like a churrasco without guacamol or frijoles, which is to say, not one worth having), mash the aguacates, season the chicken, chop cilantro, dice onions, peel garlic, squeeze limones, run up and down the stairs from the kitchen to the backyard a bunch of times.

revel in hands made black and greasy from pulling things off the grill. prod things unnecessarily with the machete because machete + fire. put on the old school reggaeton playlist, sube el volumen, dance like fools.

keep throwing cebollines, tortillas and papas on the grate until it's too dark to see. then put on four steaks. smear chimichurri someone just brought from walmart on everything that hasn't already been carried to the table. make sure no one tries the micheladas until 4 more limes have been added. run out for more tortillas and several liters of beer.

fall onto your stool. inhale the bean-tortilla-guacamole-chirmol-beer-chicken mixture you've piled onto your plate. when so full you begin to slump out of your chair, somehow manage to make more room for pan dulce and cafe. don't fall asleep, don't let the night end.

is this a commune?

a few clarifications while this sputtering project of a food blog gets restarted:

-while I am no longer in college, it is safe to say I am still on a college student's budget

-the questions/support of several former readers (evanka, madison, adri, jordan, steph, anna, mame, this is your shoutout) made me consider, and eventually decide to, restart the blog. also this makes it sound like there's some big ole readership floating out there in the interwebs. there's not, but the people who were reading it seemed to like it, which is encouragement enough.

-going to try and make this as non-traveler-voyeuristic as possible. if it veers into that territory please god yall let me know.  

I wanted to keep this up last year. I really did. A series of strange, slow and occasionally uncomfortable personal revelations kept me away from writing in general BUT. but. Trying to get that whole bit up and going again. So we'll see how it goes.

Now onto the meat of the post:

Just started a new job in Guatemala in a suburb of the city called Villa Nueva. The neighborhood where I'm living happens to be v close to a large market (series of markets is probably more accurate), which is lovely because last year the part of town where I was living had a 40 min roundtrip bus ride involved whenever one wished to go to the market. a deterrent. But now it's gone + on top of that the neighborhood has a number of people who sell fruit/veggies/meat from their houses, so fresh & cheap foodstuffs are closer than ever. also 1Q (think a dollar divided by 7.5. or work it out. this isn't a math blog so I won't) chocofrutas aka sticks of frozen chocolate-covered fruit. blessings abound.

now people are in the kitchen making salsa, roasting vegetables, mashing avocados (3x10Q) together. two people just worked together to string lights across the rooftop and into the room. there's a shelf full of baskets with all of our names on them where we can store our things, and one community basket (sharing <3 I'm a kitchen mooch so this is a dream come true). there's also apparently a community food budget. and we have group dinners most nights of the week, if this is a commune (is it a commune???) it's pretty nice so far.

PS a sizeable chunk of the roof of the school building is a GARDEN with HERBS and EDIBLE FLOWERS. also there's a compost bin. possibilities. let the horitcultural scheming begin.