Words Fail Me: The Staff of Life

(In which our new series, Words Fail Me, is introduced, and Cowbell learns that pride goeth basically every damn day.)

Fold, mix, or knead?

Those of you who know me know that I'm not exactly channeling Suzy Homemaker, here. I wish I were one of those people who find cooking relaxing or fun, but I'm not. I cook because we need to eat. Moving to Costa Rica, however, has forced me to embrace my inner Suzy. I wish she were more like an inner Sybil who could just completely take over in the kitchen while I go to my inner quiet place for a nap, but no, nothing so convenient. It's all me in the kitchen.

Logically, I know that not eating processed food is a very good thing. When I'm not actually in the kitchen, I'm all about it. In theory. When it comes time to actually cook, though, logic me importa un bledo*. Once in a while, you just miss a good box or package. An easy mix. That frozen Indian food from Trader Joe's. Actually, you can find packaged food here at AutoMercado, aka the Gringo Grocery, so named because the prices reflect what desperate people with US dollars are willing to pay for that imported taste of home. Which is a lot, and why I only go once a year, before Christmas. 

Anyway, "from scratch" has become more than just a fuzzy concept that happens in other people's houses or in books about the olden days. In the States, making spaghetti sauce meant I sauteed onions, peppers, mushrooms, garlic, basil, and oregano in olive oil, then dumped in a jar of store-bought sauce, added a few personal touches like a bit of sugar to cut the acidity, a pinch of cinnamon, aaand done. "Homemade." What? It's not like I used Ragú. Here, jarred sauce is either expensive (again with the import taxes) or nasty, and let's not even talk about the national brand that comes in those tiny foil packages. Single serving size. For a gnome. So spaghetti sauce here means an assload of tomatoes. This is where I should write about blanching and peeling tomatoes. Yeah, screw that. Did it once. Everyone knows all the vitamins are in the skins, anyway.

My sauce is chock full o' vitamins.

Sweet tooth, pfft. I have a carb tooth.

Anyway, I'm kind of domestic now, y'all. I learned to make yogurt in my Crock-Pot. Yogurt, now. Come on, impressive, right? Fine. I was impressed. I make beans on the regular. Cannot believe I ever used canned black beans in the US. Guácala. Blech. That is my skeleton in the closet here, people; do not out me to the new fam. I also learned to make my own bread. I wasn't feeling that at first, but after a few months of eating "air bread" I warmed to the idea. (Hey, it's a tortilla society. You want good bread, go to Europe.)

Also, I found a no-knead recipe. That's what clinched it. 

The esposo, having been raised on air bread, was quite happy with this dense, warm, homemade manna from heaven, straight out of our oven. So we're talking about it over coffee and warm, buttered slices of deliciousness, and I say to him -- in Spanish, because it's Spanish week:

Homemade bread is so much better for us because it doesn't have preservatives. 

He stops chewing.  

Because it doesn't have what?

Preservatives. I don't use preservatives to make it.

I hope not. That doesn't even make sense.

At this point, I should've realized I'd committed yet another word fail, but these were early days, and I had yet to discover how the intricacies of Spanish lace the language like so much barbed wire. I charged on. 

Well, it does make sense if you want the bread to last longer.

 ... the bread?

Yeah. The bread in the store is full of preservatives. It lasts forever.

Oh. Preservatives. You mean preservatives.

Yeah. What did I say?

Condoms.

Oh. Preservativos means condoms. Preservantes means preservatives. Go figure. To this day, I just avoid those two words. Whoever invented Spanish did that shit just to mess with me. . 


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me importa un bledo:  it matters to me about as much as a blade of grass. I couldn't care less about it. 
guácala (WAH-kah-lah) - Gross. Blech. Disgusting. That's nasty.