Gormet Cuisine

I was just looking through some old pictures and found this epic shot:

One mother@#$%ing giant pile of processed
cheese! Stick of butter at right shown for scale.
Also note massive pile of wrappers in background.

This giant pile of processed cheese is surely one of the greatest things that has ever graced our humble kitchen. Some friends that Dan and I met at a drunken arm wrestling contest (another story), offered to come over and cook us dinner one night. They had been living with a host family for a while and had thus been subsisting off a mainly tortilla diet for way too long. They were so excited at the prospect of "western" food, that they told us they would cook us a giant Tex-Mex feast if they could use our kitchen. Obviously, we agreed.

When they showed up, they had brought with them enough oil in the form of "cheese product" to heat a Canadian house for a winter. The above pictured pile of artery clogging goodness eventually became a truly magnificent nacho cheese sauce. Don't ever let anyone tell you that processed cheese doesn't have its place in haut cuisine. It was really an amazing sauce.

Here's one more shot of "cheese mountain":

Its not easy peeling this much cheese. The head chef
and her sous-chef are hard at work here.

Home Improvement

Why is Dan hugging this filthy mattress on top of a burning pile of bricks? Read on to find out!

Could he be crazy? drunk? hungover? All are definite possibilities, but there is another more important reason for this seemingly inexplicable behavior. We had just finished the construction of our very own brick oven!

We started this project shortly after arriving in Xela and finding out that our house didn't have an oven. In a state of giddy enthusiasm, this seemed like a cheap and (get this...) easy way of providing bread baking capabilities to the intern house. Well, the project ended up taking the better part of 3 months to finish and involved feats such as carrying backpacks full of bricks across town, but in the end it was all worth it. This (in conjuction with probable drunkeness) is why Dan is looking so blissful resting his head on a dirty burning matress.

Below are some pictures of our handywork.


Dave

Here you can see the oven in operation.
We did weigh the pros and cons of building
a wood fired oven in our garage and in the
end staying dry while cooking won out
over turning the garage into a smokehouse.
Actually, we see this as a pro as well. Once
we get some meat hooks, well... welcome to
Jerkyville!

The first time we fired 'er up, we decided that
spraying some propane into the middle of the
fire would be a great way to speed up the
pre-heating process. Unfortunately, there's no
picture of the molten pile of Aluminum that
resulted. Don't worry Mum, no trips to the burn
ward this time.

I guess I still haven't explained exactly why there
is a old straw mattress on top of the oven. Besides
drastically increasing the chances of a house fire, its
main function is to add some extra insulation to the
oven.

Some leftovers from Bakefest I. Lamb roast, jerk
pork roast, spider-shaped bread. All delicacies
from the oven.

"Classical" Musicians For Hire

Its been a busy couple months for the Vigilantes of Funk. In between our weekly shows at Ojala, we've been having marathon practices 2 or 3 nights a week to make sure our funk is all in order. We were all feeling a bit burnt out after our Halloween show (see pictures on facebook: Los Vigilantes Del Funk) and decided to take a week off. However plans around here seem to be pretty fickle and Virgil and I ended up playing a show on Thursday night anyways.

Basically, what happened was: A freind of Kike's (the owner of Ojala) called him, to see if he knew any musicians who could play an instrumental set at university event. Kike called another friend, who called Steve, who told me and Virgil about this. Being as though we were kind of bored at work, we decided to meet this guy and see what he was looking for. What he had in mind was some classical music while people made their way into some sort of conference and then something a little more upbeat for the reception afterwards. Also, he wanted us to audition on the spot. Hmmmm...

Well Virgil and I don't actually know any classical music, but the guy said he was willing to pay us 200Q for the gig and we did have an acoustic guitar (me) and a mandolin (Virgil) - very classical instruments. Thinking quickly, I suggested to Virgil we play some "classical" Metallica and Guns 'n Roses. I figured as long as we played the songs slowly and with lots of picking no one would know the difference. It worked out great. We played "Sweet Child of Mine" and "Nothing Else Matters" and he said we'd be perfect!

This was all happening Thursday afternoon by the way, about 2 hours before we were to start playing. So we quickly went home to run over a few more "classical tunes" and put on white dress shirts (something I've seen classical musicians do a lot). When we rocked up to the university a bit later, the scene was frankly a bit intimidating. Everyone was impecabbly dressed in suits and ties and the conference was in a small, church-like room that looked like it could have hosted a presidential address. We met our buddy and he ushered us right up to a small stage at the front of the room and told us to start playing. We were both pretty dazed by the whole thing and were pretty sure our sham was going to get called. But in times of trouble you've got to go with what you know, so we launched into some "classical" Grateful Dead. We played for about 45 minutes while the suits filed in, and I've got to say they were diggin it! We left as the conference started to a solid round of applause and went to go grab a bite to eat before the reception set.

The second set went smoothly and we got fed lots of tasty food and a bottle of wine. After we wrapped up, Juanta, the guy we had been talking to, paid us and then invited us back to his bar for more free drinks and food. We ended up getting pretty drunk with him and his friends and had a damned fine night. It turns out that he also wants the Vigilantes to play a weekly show at his bar, which sounds sweet to me. I'll keep you all posted on what happens.

Dave