Another Somewhat Belated Update!

This weekend we finally had our first cooking lesson!!  Miss Jennie, our neighbor, friend, and life-skills teacher at school, gave us our inaugural lesson.  Saturday morning Miss Jennie went to the market and bought all the supplies we would need to make potato greens, one of our favorite Liberian dishes: potato greens (obviously), vegetable oil, fish, shrimp, chicken, onions, peppers, salt, and another spice we can't figure out a name for.  That afternoon she came over and we began the learning process.

First, clean the fish: clean out the innards, scrape off the scales and the fins with a knife, remove the head, then cut the rest into 3 sections (yes, bones and skin are still intact!).  Next, prepare the chicken... aka, rinse and put aside.  Third, clean the shrimp.  Then, fry all of the above in the oil.  Let's just say that a large amount of oil in a relatively shallow frying pan over an open-flame gas stove that sits directly above our large gas tank made for a few tense moments for Ann Elizabeth and I.  At one point, we looked at each other and said, "If there's a fire, we just run."  When you don't have a fire extinguisher, the thought of an oil/gas fire is a little daunting!  However, Miss Jennie is a pro and successfully fried the meats without incinerating the house... whew!

Next it was time for the potato greens.  Cut them up and stick them in a big pot with some oil, peppers, and onions.  Cook for a while, add water and the meats, and boil until it looks ready.  Serve over rice and, voila, potato greens!  It was nice to have the smell of food cooking in our house... we cook, but it's all rice and beans, noodles and tomato sauce, or cans of ravioli, so the smells of cooking don't normally hit us like they did on Saturday, and it was lovely!  We enjoyed sitting down to a meal with Miss Jennie and her grandson Ben (4 years old). 

Hopefully we will have more forays into the world of Liberian cooking in the near future, including some trips to the market with our teachers so we can learn where to buy the good stuff!