Mega Cooking Challenge Revival - A Testiment To The Ability To Improvise

I have written at length for quite some time about how my culinary endeavors have become restrained due to a variety of reasons. However, in April, we had our friends B and M over for a cheese and wine night (one of our favorite things to do together). They live much of the time in Mexico, and like us love to travel. So there are only a few occasions per year that we get see each other. We realized we could see each other again before they left the U.S. We were thinking of what we would do (our meetings always involve eating). None of us were excited about eating out here. I suddenly had the urge to cook and said I would cook dinner. 

Fast forward, to this past weekend, and said dinner took place. 

As I had gotten closer to the dinner taking place, I was filled with a desire I'd not had in quite a while. I wanted to try something new! I wanted to stretch. I decided I would make a meal with a Spanish influence. I went through two venerable cookbooks I have on Spanish cuisine. A lot of the recipes required techniques I'd not used before. I finally whittled my menu down...for the most part. 

I was unsure what to make for the first course. I debated between a lentil salad and an asparagus dish baked with an egg in it. As you will see, what turned out was some of both and not either.

The second course was easier. I found a chicken dish that had the poultry cooked on top a bed of potatoes and vegetables.  

Lastly, I decided to make a dessert. This was a pretty big stretch for me. During our past years of cooking big meals, Wife always made the dessert. But Wife has tons on her plate at the moment and this whole meal was my idea and I was intrigued with the idea of pulling it off. I chose an item, a lemon flavored cheese cake like dish that looked pretty easy and straight forward. Looks can be deceiving. 

So without further ado, let's dive into the full cooking experience. 

 The Dessert

 

 This is a tale of how one miscalculation can turn a simple process into a quagmire of scrambling to save the dish. 

The recipe was technically very basic. Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs. Add cheese. Add a mixture of flavored milk with breadcrumbs to thicken and bind. Put in pan. Bake. 

Easy Peasy. Right?

However, as I have never baked before, I didn't know quite what the milk and breadcrumb mixture texture should be. 

Behold milk cooked with lemon zest and cinnamon stick

 

 Ready to be combined with the bread crumbs

 

 Actually combining

 

 Laying it all out for the final amalgamation. Please note the texture of the bread crumb mixture. In retrospect, it should have been much more batter like.

 

 

Creaming the butter and sugar

 

Adding the eggs

 

 After the cheese was added and mixed smooth, in went the bread crumb mixture

 

 Here is where things went south fast. That mixture should have been much looser. Like a cream. As I mixed it those clumps of bread crumb mixture broke down but did not amalgamate. I tried beating faster, changing to the whisk attachment. I tried adding more milk. All I succeeded in doing was making a bunch of smaller bread crumb mixture globules. And a huge mess. I know this will never work. I will end up with uncooked bread crumb globules in the end product which will be gross. 

What to do.

I decide to put it all through a strainer. Only partially successful (no pictures from this point as I was in panic mode). The batter part when through the strainer but the uncombined bread crumb mixture just stuck in the wholes of the strainer. I thought "Could I just cook the batter I have?" But no, a lot of the flavor was in the bread crumb mixture. So I scraped off the mixture from the strainer and put it into the blender, added more milk and attempted to turn it into batter consistency. Oh and I made and even greater mess during all this. 

Finally success. I put it in the pan and baked (of course forgetting to coat the pan with additional bread crumbs).

While all this was happening, Wife was taking a nap in the living room on the couch while I'm banging away and swearing like a sailor. She told me later that she was just staying in the nap position because she didn't want to get sucked down into my chaos. 

To my amazement it cooked up fine and came right out of the pan!

 

And it actually tasted nice!

 

 Onto the Main Course

 

 The cooking of this was initially not a problem

One flavored the chicken parts. I chose to pound salt, black pepper corns, and authentic, imported from El Campello pimenton.

 

 

 

 

 One layers potato slices with green bell pepper, onion, tomato, and roasted garlic cloves. Add wine. Cover and cook in the oven. It looks like this when it is done.

 

 

 The problem was the chicken came out quite dry. And the potato veg mixture was imbalanced and overly vegetable flavored. I determined that on the day of serving I would apply a number of hacks to overcome the problems. I took the meat of the bone. I took the juice from cooking and enhanced its flavor with more salt, pepper, and MSG. I then heated the chicken meat in the enhanced juice creating a moister, and more flavorful product. 

I also enhanced the flavor of the potatoes with salt, chicken flavor cube, and MSG. I then pan fried the potato mixture to concentrate the flavors and get some browning caramelizataion. 

 

 The Making of a Combination Salad

The lentil salad recipe was very simple...it also was really bland. I knew I would need to do something with it. However, the asparagus recipe had new elements to it. 

One blanched the asparagus, drained it saving a cup of the liquid. Then one took bread cubes and garlic cloves and browned them in olive oil.

 

 One then adds some of the asparagus cooking water with pimenton, cumin, clove powder, salt and pepper and blended it smooth.

 

 Next saute the asparagus in the flavored oil

 

Add the flavoring from the blender

 

 Next knock over the remaining asparagus water drenching your counter top as you have not made enough of a mess.

(That's not actually a part of the recipe. It is just what happened)

Cook the asparagus for 10 minutes. 

When it came time to actually serve these dishes I made a number of modifications. I decided that cooking the asparagus with egg would be too heavy. So I treated it like a cold vegetable dish/salad. I added more olive oil and vinegar to the lentil salad. I also put in chopped homemade pickles. I put fresh oregano from our garden into the asparagus with some additional lemon juice. When I plated them, I put some sliced radish on top to add color and crunch.

 

 It actually turned out really nice! Amazing.

Here is the final served up dish of chicken and potatoes

 

 Here is our cook, de-I, wiped out after the first day of cooking.

 

 All in all, it turned out to be a pretty good meal and I was pleased that I could pull it all off. 

Theodora/EDI June Trip Report

 Well I could not have spoken truer words a few days ago when I made the Wait, Wait, Wait...Hurry Up post. Not only have things been moving hot and heavy in terms of the # of meetings, but the content and the progress has been amazing as well. There was so much that happened, I will try to go through it in pieces.

Theodora Ghana Virtual Assistants:

My primary focus for TGVA was ensuring we had focus and action on important strategic projects during the period we'll be missing our local manager and leader M during her maternity leave. There are things we need to do for developing our lead generation capability, using AI internally for our own operations, optimizing our website for the new AI based search environment, capturing what each VA does for their clients for purposes of back-up if a VA is ill or unavailable, and developing the ability to produce our own short-form videos for donation and business development capture. 

I was hoping to assign each of these to one of the VA's to take charge of. In the past, there would have been difficulty getting the team to buy-in and follow through. Hardly the case this time! They were enthusiastic, energetic, proactive and had their own ideas of how to best pursue these. 

Furthermore the chemistry between the three Senior VAs was so positive, warm and mutually supportive. Unlike what I've seen before over the many years we've worked on this project. 

TGVA Foundation & the Rotary Funded Training

Of necessity, the Rotary Grant Funded Training had to work through the non-profit, education only pathway. All know my feelings that education only doesn't work. HOWEVER, as my colleague in Ghana, JA, points out to me, it is the way that the game is played. Charitable and non-profit funding sources simply have an aversion (rightly or wrongly) about funding a 'for-profit' business, even if that business is run and operated exclusively for the benefit of its participants. 

The success of our Grant, the obvious advance in capability of those we trained, who were trained exclusively by our existing people, has gotten all of the entities involved (Muslim Family Counseling Service, Rotary Club to End Human Trafficking, and Rotary Club of Accra Spintex) to be talking about what other projects we could be doing to promote our mission. 

Economic Development Initiative

One of these is expanding the entrepreneur coaching and training. We are in talks with both Spintex club and MFCS on ways to do this. 

New Opportunities

And, completely out-of-the-blue, has come a new opportunity, an opportunity to work on getting a permanent home for our projects (both Theodora and EDI). I was meeting with two of our board members after the official graduation ceremony for those completing the Rotary funded training. We were talking about the need for Theodora to get out of the rented office rat race (where you are constantly dealing with landlords jacking up rents). Buying a house (a common practice here for getting business office space) is an attractive option as we need rooms for our people who come long distance to stay during the work week. 

We thought that this would mean coming up with all cash. However, one of the board members works for large bank's mortgage lending department. She told us the bank will be rolling out a program for commercial borrowers soon. They also do construction loans. Why is that important? Our grant partner, MFCS owns a large tract of land in central Accra that they've never been able to exploit because they lack the funds. If we were to provide construction funding, the land were serve as a down payment. 

All this is very much in the researching phase. But when one considers where we were a couple of years ago, it is pretty heady stuff.  

Lights - Another Ghana Apartment Adventure

It is a given...when I come to Ghana, and I take lodging, something, SOMETHING is going to be wrong with facility. It could be something minor like a door or cabinet not working correctly. It could be sinks, faucets, drains, toilets, a/c, water. Something will be not as it should. It doesn't matter how high end or low end the property is. Something will be off.

After many years of staying in a more 'non-outsider oriented' part of town to reduce my commute time (which can be substantial), I decided I was moving back to one of the 'foreigner' friendly sections of town. The building my apartment is in is fairly new, built within the last three years. The apartment itself is actually very nice. One of the nicer ones I've had in Accra. Could this be a time when I actually had a lodging experience with no issues?

Wednesday night. I am sitting in the living room of the apartment reading. The lights go out. The power is down. This is not an unusual situation. It has happened a couple of times already since I've been here. At a quality place like the one I'm staying, they have back-up generators. The back-up power usually kicks in after 3 to 5 minutes. 

3 to 5 minutes pass. No back-up power. 10 minutes pass. No back-up power. This isn't right. I look outside. Lots of apartments in my building have light. Hmmmmm. I look in the hallway. It is lit. Hmmmmm. I check the elevator. It's working. Hmmmmm. I go to the circuit breakers in the apartment. They are all on. Hmmmmm. 

I text the apartment owner representative. No response. I call the apartment owner representative. No answer. Finally, after another 10 minutes. I get a text back. 

"Boss. I am on it. I will get back to you shortly."

More minutes pass. A text from the representative.

"Ah. So sorry boss. We seem to have forgotten to pay for more electric power! We will get it taken care of." (In Ghana, you pay for power ahead of usage. If it runs out, the power is off until you buy some more.)

More minutes pass. Another text.

"Boss, we have it taken care of. You will need to input a code in the meter box."

I have actually seen this done...from afar. Have never done it myself. 

"The box should be 'here'."

I go to 'here'...no box.

"Try 'there'"

I go to 'there'...no box. (Remember I am doing this all in a dark apartment. Thank goodness Wife bought us tiny, strong flashlights to carry when we travel.)

Finally after searching many other places, the meter is found. Next I have to enter the 18 character code into meter box...in the dark with my flashlight and my cell phone. 

Success!

We have light back. It is now 11pm. I have not eaten. I'm tired and want to go to bed. 

But at least I know I am back in Ghana...for real. 

Wait, Wait, Wait...And Hurry Up

There is an old saying in the U.S. used for many experiences called 'Hurry Up and Wait'. It generally refers to a situation where you need to get something done or have an appointment with someone. You are dashing around to meet a time deadline only to encounter a significant delay from the person or organization you were rushing to meet with.

In Ghana, things are a bit different. Here there is Wait, Wait, Wait...then Hurry Up!

Example:

When I was here last January, I had meetings with the local Rotary club partnering on our grant. They were very interested in the other programs Rotary Club to End Human Trafficking Economic Development Initiative (say that 10 time fast!) had that might aid their club goals. Between January and now, I had numerous communications. I had indicated the dates I would be in Ghana and the days I had specifically set aside for meeting with club members. Crickets. Not a peep in response. 

Instead what happened was my primary contact told me he was meeting with the club on planning the day before the one I'd left open. On that Monday, he texted me and asked if I would be available for a Zoom cal at 5pm. That call led to two other meetings this week. Suddenly, there is all kinds of activity. 

Why should this surprise me? Some of you might remember I wrote about this during my very first trip to Ghana where I could not get anything scheduled before I arrived. But once I was there, I was overwhelmed with meetings. 

Somehow accepting certain aspects of the culture still seem to elude me.  

Starting On The Road To Podcast Guest Fame

Actually I have no idea if I am going to achieve Podcast Guest Fame or even what Podcast Guest Fame is. I do know that I have set myself on a road to speaking on podcasts. 

"Why? say you.

In search for lightning strikes.

"Lightning strikes? You ask.

Lightning strikes is a euphemism for being discovered. 

"And who do you want to be discovered by? " 

Someone who would be excited by the Theodora cause and solution and has the resources to help us get to the next level. At this late stage in my life, I don't have the energy to do that tireless slog of trying to find the right partner via more empirical methods. So we're doing what we can do get the story out as broadly and as widely as we can. Ideally it would be one of our women who would be doing the podcast speaking, but they are simply not confident enough at this point to be out there telling their story to strangers week after week. 

I've been asked how does one become a guest on a podcast. There are a couple of services that link up podcast hosts with those that want to speak as guests. We use one called Podmatch. It is a paid service. You put your information up. And you can search for Podcasters that you feel you would fit. The podcasters also search looking for guests that would fit the theme of their podcasts. It is not easy filling in those speaking slots week after week after week.

You would not believe how many freaking podcasts there are out there. I have not a clue as to whether any of them are getting results for their hosts or not. Most (at least the ones I'm on) seem to be passion projects. As I am at the bottom rung of the podcast ladder, the number of hosts that I've been impressed with have been few. But you can tell the difference fairly easily between the ones that have a good handle on their interview style and overall what they are doing, and those that are still trying to figure it all out.

But, my objective at this point, is to get practice delivering on this platform, start developing a reputation as a good interview with an interesting twist, develop content we can use on our other platforms, and start working up the food chain to podcasters with greater and greater audiences in hope of 'being found'. 

We will see how it goes. 

Working The Theodora Succession

If you remember the drama of only a year ago, you will know the wonderment with which I write this post. As I first reported in January, Theodora has been solidly cash flow positive through out this year and has resolved a number of infrastructure issues. As we are moving to the 6-month mark of the year, client churn (which has been our bane) has dropped substantially. We have had a number of significant clients (in terms of complexity of service provided) come on board with our team rising to the challenge to learn and master what the clients need. 

Also back in January, I wrote about how our local team (both Manager M and the Ghana Board) had worked to get a Grant for training, had recruited new candidates, and were training the same. That grant period is coming to an end. The new trainees have progressed substantially. Theodora will be picking up their training stipends because they are starting to genuinely contribute to our work. They have a ways to go before they are ready to handle a client solo. But the fact that the recruiting and training was all done by our internal group, says volumes about Theodora's potential to be sustainable.

So as I absorbed all this, I began to realize that we are no longer trying to prove our concept. We are no longer making the case that we can make credible virtual workers for U.S. business use from a pool of African women with significant disadvantages. We've shown that. Now we are on to the next phase where we need to solidify what we've accomplished and build a base to grow and bring more women into opportunity. 

As luck would have it, I was speaking on a podcast (I will make a post about being on podcasts soon) a few weeks ago where the host, rather than interviewing me, was actually giving the me, the guest, all kinds of ideas for how to create redundancy. Out of this has come a number of projects which we will be looking to implement. Practically, there is way more on the list than we realistically have the bandwidth to work on. So the team and I will need to consider them and be somewhat discriminate in which we take on and how much within each we take accomplish over the next six months. 

Nonetheless, it is a refreshing and exciting place to be at considering all the trials and challenges we've gone through. 

The Mellow Continues And A Gastronomy Update

I have written numerous times this year about the state of 'mellow' that appears to be the latest phase of transition. I wrote about it just 12 days ago. But evidently given my age addled memory, I thought it was a totally new revelation yesterday. I presume in one's late 70's that a Brahma Day which is quite long (A Day of Brahma: One "day" (Kalpa) equals 1,000 cycles of the four yugas. This amounts to 4.32 billion human years. Brahma's "night" lasts for the exact same duration.) gets reduced to about 12 human days. 

Anyway, I was internally remarking at how I am just going with the flow these day. Things certainly happen. I had a client who I thought we were totally good with, go sideways all of a sudden. And yet, I seem to be happy and content despite it. 

I know I wrote during my times in El Campello how much I enjoyed everything going slower. Well that state seems to have now come back to the homeland. Someone who I hadn't seen in quite a while asked me what I was doing. I told him pretty much what I've always done, just not as much of it and not with the intensity of energy as before. 

I do admit that there is the voice that keeps harping that I SHOULD be worried about things. That I SHOULD be more anxious about them. But for the most part I just let that voice rant and am happy in my doing things slowly and intentionally (like even doing dishes).  

A brief comment on cooking. With Wife seriously trying to lose weight, and the limitations of the gout diet, and not having the energy to cook any social type gathering, cooking has been a lot more about how do I take various things I've learned or hear about in the present and integrate them into my daily cooking. It's about all kinds of little tweaks and additions to see how the daily meal can evolve. Here are a couple of examples. 

#1 told me about a popcorn technique where you use a mortar and pestle to pulverize salt while cooking it. I wondered what would happen if I did the same technique with salt and rosemary leaves. It came out nice. Then I tried that same combination of flavors and technique making some pork chops. Result - a substantial increase in the herb flavor in the meat. Now I'm lookiing for other herb/spice combinations to use with this technique. 

I've used a recipe for cooking carrots I got from some source where you put butter, a small amount of sugar, salt and pepper and a small amount of water and then  braise the carrots. Always turns out good. I said to myself, "what if I change the sweetener and use honey? And what if I added a bit of heat for a sweet hot effect?" So I put in some NM Red Chile Powder.  Came out really nice. 

So these are the kinds of things I do on a daily basis. Just taking various things I've learned over time or are introduced to and putting them into my daily routine. 

Bon appétit.