Full Description
In 1962 Joan Fry was a college sophomore recently married to a dashing anthropologist. Naively consenting to a year-long "working honeymoon" in British Honduras (now Belize), she soon found herself living in a remote Kekchi village deep in the rainforest. Because Fry had no cooking or housekeeping experience, the romance of living in a hut and learning to cook on a makeshift stove quickly faded. Guided by the village women and their children, this twenty-year-old American who had never made more than instant coffee eventually came to love the people and the food that at first had seemed so foreign. While her husband conducted his clinical study of the native population, Fry entered their world through friendships forged over an open fire. Coming of age in the jungle among the Kekchi and Mopan Maya, Fry learned to teach, to barter and negotiate, to hold her ground, to share her space—and she learned to cook. This is the funny, heartfelt, and provocative story of how Fry painstakingly baked and boiled her way up the food chain, from instant oatmeal and flour tortillas to bush-green soup, agouti (a big rodent), gibnut (a bigger rodent), and, finally, something even the locals wouldn't tackle: a "mountain cow," or tapir. Fry's effort to win over her neighbors and hair-pulling students offers a rare and insightful picture of the Kekchi Maya of Belize, even as this unique culture was disappearing before her eyes.
Contents
List of IllustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsList of Neighbors 0001. Hurricane2. Bush Bride 000Convict Soup [RECIPE]3. At Home in the Jungle 000Sardine Surprise [RECIPE]4. The Village Idiot 000Traditional Maya Rice and Beans [RECIPE]Modern Maya Beans [RECIPE]5. No Lips or Eyelids 000Chayote and Tomatoes [RECIPE]Fried Plantains [RECIPE]6. Kinship 000Gibnut Gumbo [RECIPE]Green Corn Dumplings [RECIPE]7. Home Brew 000Chicha [RECIPE]8. Walking with the Dead 000Lucia's Cilantro Stewed Chicken [RECIPE]9. The Essential Nature of the Rainforest 000Kekchi Scrambled Eggs [RECIPE]Lancha [RECIPE]10. Everybody and Her Brother 000Flour Tortillas [RECIPE]Chicken Vegetable Caldo with Samat [RECIPE]11. Dick and Jane & Ilegorio y Teodora 000Comal Cookies [RECIPE]12. Hexed 000Creamy Pumpkin Soup [RECIPE]13. Strawberry Sunday 000Escabeche [RECIPE]14. Food Feud 000Sesame Coconut Crunch [RECIPE]15. "You Need a Second Husband" 000Chickpea Soup with Cilantro and Pasta [RECIPE]16. The Earth Is a Cornfield 000Callaloo [RECIPE]Bush Greens and Garbanzos [RECIPE]17. A Feast among the Fallen Gods 000Feast-Day Chile Verde [RECIPE]Afterword 000
