Monday June 27th PIZZA!! and more

We are having a bit of a crises with one of the boys who “wanted to be king”, so I needed to be more accessible to enforce discipline, and knew I would not get to doing a blog today. Enter Julie ,who I recruited to write my blog post for me, since we did have a rather unusual day yesterday. She did a great job—I hope that you enjoy her ghostwriting:)) Yesterday we had the grand idea of making a special lunch for the boys, pizza and salad. Well, it was a good idea, we just weren't as prepared for it as we should have been. Making a meal for three is a whole different job than making french bread pizza for a dozen hungry men and boys, plus a few children (who almost ate as much as the big boys), and the cooks, of course. So, we planned to go down and get the pizza ready to bake in Hawa's (Claudia's) oven at 12:00. Around 11:30 or so I went down to the outside kitchen with all of the salad makings to cut up the veggies and get it ready. We'd already washed all of our veggies (fresh from the two hour trip to the market Ray and I took this morning) in bleach water to purify it and had let the lettuce soak in vinegar water for several minutes as a double check. This was my 4th or 5th trip to the market, but Ray's first. He found it fascinating as I do. Ask the price, translate the Bambara in your head, multiply by 5 to arrive at the REAL price, then convert to US$$ so that you have some idea what you are being asked to pay. (Don't forget that they are taking kilo, not pounds so multiply the quantity by 2 also.) WHEW! It makes my head hurt just writing it. Fanta, our main weekend cook, was a great help, and it was nice to be in a community market, where we are known, not really the big city. We purchased jaba and tamati, salati, and concon for the salad. Then there was the misisogo and some jege, tulu and frononton (I think I spelled them right. If you want to read along in Bambara, you can go to the SIL website and get a downloadable Bambara Lexicon. :-) Back to the Pizza saga. Meanwhile, Julie stayed upstairs in our kitchen and chopped up and sauteed the onions and peppers, and kept an eye on the lentils I'd also put on to cook (when you don't get meat everyday, you have to get protein somehow!) Before we knew it, it was 12:30 and we hadn't even gotten the bread ready!!! How in the world did the time fly?! I came up from salad preparations just as Julie was getting things ready to go down with the pizza makings and start on that. When we had everything (or so we thought) downstairs in Hawa's kitchen. Julie started cutting the baguettes while Eva put the three big salad bowls together. For regular rice meals, we use large serving (community) bowls (or tasa in Bambara)to feed 6 people at the table. Those bowls were what Eva used for salad, and it was a LOT of salad. While they did those jobs, I prepared the tomato sauce with garlic, oregano, and mixed herbs, and then also got the salad dressing made. (no bottled dressings to grab. Vinigrette made with soup cubes is the order of the day.) About the time we realized the cheese was still upstairs and needed to be grated still, Fanta came and helped us. Ah, it was very good indeed to have another helper. Julie ran up and got the cheese, grater, and a bowl; Fanta began the time consuming job of putting tomato paste on the bread. When we had the cheese down, and all grated, we could finally put the lentils/onion/pepper topping mix on the tomato pasted bread along with the cheese and get the first round going in the oven. Oh my, and I didn't tell you about the pans yet. We had only two actual pizza pans, and that just wasn't going to work. So we also used a broiler pan, the lid of the broiler pan, and two small cake pans. We may not have had a Pampered Chef kitchen, but we used what we could find. When the first batch of bread pizza's were ready to serve, Eva took over the sauce spreading for Fanta, and Fanta delvered pizza out to our waiting customers. My, oh my! They were like hungry wolves!!! Granted, it was 15 minutes past lunch time, but still! We kept the pizza coming as quickly as it would bake, and they kept asking for more until it was all finished (We kept our servings back for us and took it up to our apartment when lunch was all done to eat in a little peace & quiet:) They finished up ALL of the salad, and ALL of the pizza we served them. Though, at the end they were somewhat picky and scraped some of the sauce off. Ah well, as American's we like our pizza sauce more than the rest of the world. When we went up to eat, Fanta was wonderful and cleaned up all of the dishes and dirty utensils we'd used in making the pizza. That was quite refreshing to not have all of that to clean up after you'd been stressed making lunch. (Honestly, I don't know how Virginia Hockenberry, and Linda Winger, and many other ladies do it all, preparing for, cooking for, and cleaning up after huge amounts of people) So, it was a learning experience! We'll change several things the next time we do it, but... now we know. Thanks Julie! Great writing! A quick report for you all on what is really important: the lives of our boys! This evening, at the end of a long day of face-offs, I got a BIG hug from a disciplined, and calm young “king-in-the-making”. God is good and His grace is never ending. Aren't we all glad of that? Thank you all for your continued prayers. We are seeing the results of them in daily life, and are often reminded of the way God works thru His people. We are so glad that you are all apart of this with us. As always, Be Blessed and be a Blessing to those whom your mighty God brings across your way.