Coffee starts at 5 a.m., breakfast is served at 6:30
a.m. I arrived about 5 and started in. Eggs, bacon, sliced fruit, cereal and toast.
Breakfast over at 8. Then we start in on lunch.
I can’t remember what we fixed that first full day for lunch because I was gone most of the morning. I was asked to go into the local town, Solola, for a shopping trip with one of the HELPS people. He is Guatemalan and is learning some English. So far, he's got yes and ok and thank you down. Pretty much the extent of my Spanish is si, banos and gracias (oh and cervaza but we were an alcohol free facility so it wasn't relevant). We got along great.
We needed industrial size coffee filters for the giant coffee pot always going in the dining room. Paper towels were working but it would be nice to have actual filters. My HELPS guide took us to a grocery store where we found regular size filters. He began filling up the cart. I knew they were the wrong ones. No, No (see my Spanish was increasing) I said. Mas grande. These won't work (like he understood this). Anyway we got to an understanding and put back the filters. All in all it was a grand expedition and I got to see the countryside outside the compound.
Dinner was Chicken Dijon and rice pilaf. I believe this was the afternoon I made brownies for dessert. There was fruit, rolls and a vegetable. We had two large gas (we were using propane) ranges to cook with. The cook-tops worked great. Six burners on each. When we really got cooking the whole thing was going. One oven worked pretty well. It had a regular knob to turn it on. Using an oven thermometer, it was determined to be fairly accurate. If the oven was set to 350 it eventually got to 350 and held fairly steady around that temp, although it tended to be a bit hot after a long period.
The other oven was totally off. First of all, it took us 2 days to figure out how to even turn it on. It has some electronic gizmo to set it. When set at 350 it would never get above 300. The highest it would register on the electronic control was 379 and that was 325-350 if you were lucky. We really needed 2 working ovens given the amount of food to be cooked but we had what we had. With 4 large pans of rice to bake and 4 large pans of chicken to bake and brownies to bake it was pan juggling to get everything done.
The Chicken Dijon (made with yellow mustard, the request for some dijon was not fulfilled) was delicious. The yellow mustard worked great, especially since it was mixed with cream and other spices. It is a specialty of one of the team leaders, John. Really it should be Chicken DiJohn. So after dinner, egg cracking and construction crew lunch making the evening ended. Dead tired, feet beginning to ache and gratified to have fed the team I climbed into my top bunk in the dorm (7 women sharing one room), put my earplugs in (to block out snoring) and fell asleep. The alarm went off way too early at 4:30 a.m.
I can’t remember what we fixed that first full day for lunch because I was gone most of the morning. I was asked to go into the local town, Solola, for a shopping trip with one of the HELPS people. He is Guatemalan and is learning some English. So far, he's got yes and ok and thank you down. Pretty much the extent of my Spanish is si, banos and gracias (oh and cervaza but we were an alcohol free facility so it wasn't relevant). We got along great.
We needed industrial size coffee filters for the giant coffee pot always going in the dining room. Paper towels were working but it would be nice to have actual filters. My HELPS guide took us to a grocery store where we found regular size filters. He began filling up the cart. I knew they were the wrong ones. No, No (see my Spanish was increasing) I said. Mas grande. These won't work (like he understood this). Anyway we got to an understanding and put back the filters. All in all it was a grand expedition and I got to see the countryside outside the compound.
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| Main Square in Solola |
Dinner was Chicken Dijon and rice pilaf. I believe this was the afternoon I made brownies for dessert. There was fruit, rolls and a vegetable. We had two large gas (we were using propane) ranges to cook with. The cook-tops worked great. Six burners on each. When we really got cooking the whole thing was going. One oven worked pretty well. It had a regular knob to turn it on. Using an oven thermometer, it was determined to be fairly accurate. If the oven was set to 350 it eventually got to 350 and held fairly steady around that temp, although it tended to be a bit hot after a long period.
The other oven was totally off. First of all, it took us 2 days to figure out how to even turn it on. It has some electronic gizmo to set it. When set at 350 it would never get above 300. The highest it would register on the electronic control was 379 and that was 325-350 if you were lucky. We really needed 2 working ovens given the amount of food to be cooked but we had what we had. With 4 large pans of rice to bake and 4 large pans of chicken to bake and brownies to bake it was pan juggling to get everything done.
The Chicken Dijon (made with yellow mustard, the request for some dijon was not fulfilled) was delicious. The yellow mustard worked great, especially since it was mixed with cream and other spices. It is a specialty of one of the team leaders, John. Really it should be Chicken DiJohn. So after dinner, egg cracking and construction crew lunch making the evening ended. Dead tired, feet beginning to ache and gratified to have fed the team I climbed into my top bunk in the dorm (7 women sharing one room), put my earplugs in (to block out snoring) and fell asleep. The alarm went off way too early at 4:30 a.m.
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