Belize & My Heart's Kitchen
After a month away, I’ve only just begun to miss food from home. It isn’t so much the food, but the memories and emotions associated with the food, the people who I cook with, and the people I share meals with.
I’m on a tiny island, fifty miles off the coast of Belize, parked behind my laptop at a communal dining table in the kitchen. I’m stationed with four Belize Coast Guard agents and eight employees from the Belize Audubon Society. They take turns preparing meals but haven’t thrown me in the rotation yet as I don’t possess the necessary culinary skills to make flour tortillas or Johnny Cakes (a cakey biscuit), two very essential staples in the Belizean diet. Today the Coast Guard is on breakfast duty, and two guys are awake at sunrise to make a scramble for all of us.
I’ve taken over the large plywood table as my makeshift desk, surrounded by the papers, folders, pens, bird guides, water bottles, and empty coffee mugs of my daily routine. I’m volunteering for the Belize Audubon Society, designing brochures and bird checklists for their national parks. I’m posted up early this morning in the center of the kitchen with my first cup of Earl Grey tea, and a day-old homemade flour tortilla with peanut butter and papaya jelly.
The kitchen is large and open, with a bank of window screens behind me. The air is soft and warm, blowing just enough to cool off the morning heat, but not too much as to disturb my workspace.
I chose the location of my desk carefully when I arrived on the island over a month ago. I knew immediately that the center of activity would be the kitchen. Each morning, I steep my tea, grab a warm tortilla off the stack, and wait patiently for the action to begin. It is from the magic of my tropic stoop that I get to experience it all — the smell, the sound, the chatter, the music, the stories, the buzz and bustle of island life in Belize.
First things first with every meal preparation on the island is music. Dominican reggaeton shuffles its way to full volume as one guy cracks the eggs into a giant metal bowl. His sous chef discovers two crates of overripe bananas and lets out a loud, euphoric shriek as if he had struck gold or won the lottery. As their banana talk winds up to a full-throttle creole banter, I can tell they’re planning something good. My creole is improving quickly but I can only catch every other word. They’re speaking fast but I know they’re talking banana cake.
Having never been far from home, I haven’t given much thought to what food I miss when I’m away.
I remember my mom telling me that when she was in the Peace Corps in India she missed marshmallows because they reminded her of her little brother and how they’d make s’mores in their backyard every summer in San Francisco. She found a marshmallow recipe from the Joy of Cooking, a wedding gift from her mother, and the only cookbook she had brought with her to India. There is still a small star penciled lightly by the recipe and bits of sugar stuck to the pages.
