Did You Try The Strange Cake?

As is often the case I need to open my tale with some of last night's goings on. By late last evening we were all famished. We were out of oatmeal and wanted to save what little canned meat we have for later in the week. So, we had to get creative and make cornmeal the focal point of whatever dish we came up with. Rachel did some searching and decided to make corn tortillas and then bake those into chips. The idea was wonderful. It seemed like the perfect snack to tide us all over until breakfast this morning.

Sadly, something went wrong. The recipe Rachel was using called for corn flour, not corn meal. She didn't realize this until the “dough” refused to reach the right consistency. Once she discovered her mistake she found another recipe and tried to correct the situation with white flour (of which we had a small supply). The dough took shape and started behaving better, but the taste was off. She called me in for help around 7PM.

Now I was seriously exhausted by that point and just wanted to get the cooking over with and go finish watching the episode of classic Dr. Who I had been enjoying when I got called away. I tasted the tortilla she had made and decided the best thing to do was to dump in sugar and water. Sadly this was a mistake. It made the dough more a super gooey paste than a dough. We were out of wheat flour so I dumped in more corn meal to dry it out. That worked. Sort of....

The result was this really thick, rather chunky.... I guess you would call it “dough” for lack of a better word. We could roll it out until it was about an eighth of an inch thick or so. Any more than that and it would start to tear. We cooked these things (whatever they were) in the giant pot the Bellot's were gracious enough to give us.

After the first ones were “done” (that is to say firm enough to pick up without disintegrating) I tasted one of them. Immediately I christened them “Strange Cakes” because I felt that was what best described them. Imagine that someone gave you an overly mealy, slightly sweetened, piece of cornbread that a truck had run over a few times until it all stuck together into a patty. That is, in essence, a strange cake.


They were to oddest thing I've ever eaten more that one bite of. These wouldn't have gotten any better treatment, but my stomach told me I had better eat them. I found myself wishing that we had thought to buy a little hard tack and gruel. It would have saved us from the strange cakes. Living a few weeks on pemmican would have been a delight by comparison.

In any event, that was dinner last night. After it was done (which turned out to be after 8PM) I stayed up to do the dishes. It was around 9PM before I finally got to lay down and get to sleep. Rachel thoughtfully got up and closed the shutters to help keep the morning light out. It worked and I didn't get up until right at 9AM.

As a result I've felt much better today and I expect by tomorrow I'll feel up to doing a full days work (and maybe a bit more as there's a lot of catch up for me to play). I woke up and started my normal morning routine with the exception of the fact that this was Sunday and normally we'd be getting ready for Church. Even had we been in Soufriere I wouldn't have felt up to it this morning. I had a touch of hibernation sickness, lol.

Nothing was the primary order of the day and I intended to do as much of it as possible. I did get around to taking pictures of the view from the different rooms. This was Mom Y's suggestion and I thought it was a good one. So, here they are:

That's just in front of the house. I snapped that shot because of the chickens :)


Those are the views from the boys' current room (remember they asked for that room, lol).


Those are from Libby's patio.


Those are from the boys' future patio. (Rachel is making them move once we have more furniture).


Those three are from Abby & Felicity's balcony.


Those three are from ours.


Those are just a few photos I took to keep grandparents happy.

We plan to do a “video tour” of the house soon, but Rachel wants to wait until we have the house a little more in order. We may do it tomorrow, but more than likely it's going to be Wednesday (Tuesday is going to be eaten up by our trip to town). We plan to get to it, it's just going to take time :)

For brunch today Rachel made fried spam and grits.


We've saved the spam up until now. Rachel thought it would be best to hold on to it until we got out here. It proved to be a wise decision. We have three more cans and two more days to go, so we should be fine. Tonight she's going to try to make a soup with some of the local potato type plants we have. We'll see how it goes. I figure it's got to be better than strange cakes.

This is the part of the program where I take a moment to thank the Lord for his providence. For those of you who don't already know we wanted to get chickens before we got out here. I wasn't sure if we should buy some or wait or what. As it turned out a chicken decided to hatch ten eggs under the house we were leasing in Sourfriere. We managed to catch nine of the ten chicks we've been raising for the last two months. So, in a few months time we should start getting eggs. I plan to add more chickens to the lineup, but for now nine isn't bad.

We also wanted dogs since we're living more out in the country as it were. Once again I wasn't sure if we should buy one before we left or what. We decided to wait and when we got here Thursday afternoon we found a half-starved pregnant dog living under what is, for the moment, our shed. She was a little shy at first, but after Rachel gave her some food and picked about 200 ticks off her she became very friendly. Today she is having her pups. She's up to six at the moment and there may be more to come.


These ought to tide us over in the dog department until we can get Spike out here :)

Anyways, it's 5:45PM and I want to continue my goof off. So, for the moment at least, goodnight from Dominica!