During my time in New Mexico, I was not only the Project Leader but the cook. Good for me since cooking is my love language. I don’t generally have too many people falling out after they eat my food and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to cook for a crowd. Anyway, I digress.
Since it was snowing, yes there was LOTS of snow in New Mexico, one of the meals I made was Chili and Cornbread.
We were fortunate to have several mechanics and a plumber on our team so they were busy fixing several of the cars on the mission base that had beed broken for a while. During our lunch time this particular day, some of the guys were in town purchasing parts and the other was under strict instructions to watch the shop. They missed lunch and the rest of the group gobbled up the giant pot of chilli.
Liz and Haley volunteered to come back to the house with me to make another batch. They wanted a cooking lesson. (They were our two youngest.) Aside from a few mishaps with learning how to use a gas stove, they did very well and the guys ate up the entire second batch of chili and almost an entire pan of cornbread. Liz and Haley were so pleased with themselves, they asked me to write a blog about their time in the kitchen so here it is.
On to the fun stuff… The BIC Mission was having their annual conference the day after we were leaving and they asked us to do some baking to prepare for it. No problem. We had several people volunteer. Liz and Haley were two of them. Once again we were all in the kitchen cooking away. I should say that all of the cooking was from scratch which the kids had not done before. Technically, I was not in charge of the cooking project. I made a few things that the base director had specifically asked me to make and left to go study for my teaching time later on that evening. A half hour or so into it, Liz and Haley both come in with flour and various food items all over them and each had a giant bowl of “stuff” in their hands. With sad faces they asked me to come back to the gym kitchen and help them “fix” the giant bowls of “stuff” they had ended up with. When I made it back to the kitchen I laughed out loud. All of the things they were wearing were in abundance all over the counters, floor and walls of the kitchen. Needless to say we had some good laughs. We discovered what the problems were with the bowls-o-goodness, fixed them and then began the fun job of cooking at 7000 feet above sea level. Not a job for the weak hearted!
All in all they had a great time learning, I had a great time teaching and lucky for us Lynne and Robin saved the day by cleaning up the mess!
Liz and Haley thanks for all the laughs and for your willing hearts. Let me know the next time you are going to tackle a cooking project. I will be there. (with a camera of course) 🙂
