Summer Journal entries (Creative)

Evidence (images): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1P8Bq81hRCYJc059hRPGsfGL9sn5W4gRPTphzApPasDA/edit?usp=sharing

Creative:

There have been many occasions when we have gathered as a family to prepare and enjoy delicious meals together. My dad’s family lives in Nicaragua but most of my mom’s family lives here in Costa Rica Guanacaste. My mom has 6 sisters here in Guanacaste but our family is closer to my aunt Liz than the rest. My aunt Liz has two children who have always been the closest cousins we have, their names are Zelenia and Jose. My aunt Liz loves to cook unlike my mom, the first time we got together was to make lasagna. My family and I have never made lasagna but we have eaten it when it has been given to us. It was one afternoon when we arrived at my aunt’s house, my sisters and I were ready to learn and have fun in the kitchen. We made two lasagnas, one meat and one vegetarian. My aunt Liz spent most of the process trying to convince everyone that vegetarian lasagna was a good idea since we all are meat eaters.We each had a chance to try both lasagnas and to our surprise the vegetarian one was just as delicious as the meat one. While we were having dinner we were watching a soccer game, my aunt’s husband is a fan but my dad is not. My dad used to say that he didn’t understand how watching people running after a ball was entertaining. It was funny when he changed his mind and we were all on the edge of our seats with our hearts beating out of our chests as we watched the game. This experience teached me that maturing means to try new things which allows us to grow through learning new things and know ourselves better.

Sunday, August 15 was Mother’s Day! It was about 8:00am in the morning when a call from my older sister Mariela woke me up. She was telling me that she was at my aunt Liz’s house with our cousin Zelenia and that they were going to prepare a meal for our mothers. My dad helped my sister take the rice off the fire. My cousin rinsed the chicken in lemon (so all the bacteria and bad smells would go away) and I peeled and cut the vegetables, shredded carrots and cabbage. At the end we made a delicious and refreshing tamarindo juice with chia. At about 12:30 noon my mom, aunt Liz and aunt Petra, were at my aunt’s house, with their families, ready for lunch. It was such an exquisite lunch and the family got together to have a good time. The food was so good that the satisfaction made us sleepy, my least favorite part was when I had to wash dishes. 

My older sister picked me and my sisters up on a Friday afternoon, my dad hadn’t come home from work and my mom had just left for work. We went to my aunt Liz’s house, obviously and started thinking about what to cook, and we decided to make a very common meal in the Nicaraguan culture, the culture of our parents, “pollo asado con tajadas”.We fried platains, we took the chicken and placed it on the grill until it is cooked. We make cabbage with shredded carrots for the salad and we rinse it, leaving it in water for 10 minutes and then drain the water. My dad came home from work and had dinner out in the corridor with my aunt and her husband. My sisters, my cousin Zelenia and I went inside the house to watch a movie while we ate. Zelenia is a fan of scary movies but my sisters and I are not so much, so we watched “Scary Movie” while reveling in the explosion of flavors that were unleashed in our mouths.

I love the rain, it is my favorite time of the year, winter. Although there are 4 seasons, for me in Guanacaste there’s only 2, Winter and Summer. I was at home with my sisters and dad was coming home from work, that day he looked very tired compared to the rest of the days. He always looks tired but that afternoon his body was fatigued, as well as his mind. To make him feel better I told him to go rest for a while after taking a shower and I started to prepare a meal that we had not eaten in a long time TACOS.For flavor I used: flavor and color consommé, tomato sauce, chili, seasoning, pepper. To be honest I didn’t use a specific recipe, I just improvised. In another pan I added oil and let it heat up to fry the tacos, this is the difficult part, besides it was my first time making tacos alone, frying was the hardest part, many things could happen, the taco could fall apart, or I could get burned by the oil, or the tortilla could break, and even the chicken could come out of the taco. I was very happy to fry everything and it came out well. I woke up my dad and made some cabbage salad as previously explained and my mom arrived in time for dinner. I was happy to have made my family’s stomach happy.

Reflection:

Cooking is an art and it was a very delicious way to express my creativity through cooking. I demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken and I developed new skills in the process like how to cook dishes that before summer I didn’t know how. Before, I was not allowed to do much in the kitchen because of the risks involved. But it makes me very happy that I had the opportunity to try new experiences. I was a risk taker when I made the decision to cook tacos on my own and without supervision in order to be caring for my dad and my loved ones. I showed empathy to my dad’s tiredness, my compassion made me take the risk to cook something more difficult than usual. Normally I would do this with my mom’s supervision because whatever mistakes I made, I knew my mom would somehow fix them. I could see personal growth, these actions showed my maturity and development of independence. I had a new challenge with the unfamiliar experience of making Lasagna and frying platanos. Before I was only allowed to peel the platanos. I gained the ability to know how to cook vegetarian and meat lasagna as well as frying plantains without burning them or myself. I developed the skill of concentration. Learning my family’s cooking strategies will help me to be a useful, knowledgeable person, the knowledge will certainly help me in the future, a better daughter, sister. I will be able to apply what I learned when cooking to my family and explain to my sisters the reason why we should marinate chicken, or why to use lemon, among other things. I have discovered that cooking is of interest to me.