Cooking in the Campo

Food is a big topic of conversation among volunteers. Whether it is talking about food we miss from home, where to get pizza or how we never imagined there were so many uses for a banana....food is always on everyone's mind it seems. At home, we have all stared into a fridge and thought..."I have nothing to eat." Here most of us live without refridgeration and modern conveniences, so when I am staring at my shelf of food that question seems to pop into my brain at every meal.

While sometimes, I give up and just eat cereal or pasta, I can say I have enjoyed the challenge of trying to come up with inventive things to cook. Some home runs to date have been curried black bean veggie burgers, crepes with carmelized apples, curried chicken soup and homemade pasta sauce with sardines. One of my favorite things is baking in my MacGyver style oven, which consists of a pot with a tuna can in the bottom on which you place a pie tin. The tuna can allows the tin to sit off the bottom and with a lid on the warm air circulates around and just like that you have an oven. I make a lot of banana bread, cacao (chocolate) brownies, and pumpkin bread...which turned out more like a bread pudding.

Last week my campo cooking genius moved up a level and I hit a cooking grand slam. It was pouring outside and I was sick of reading so I stared at the stuff in my kitchen and looked for inspiration. I wanted something desserty and was into the carmelized apples I had made for crepes the day before. I really wanted some apple pie but certainly didn't need to make a whole pie,
because I would have ended up eating most of it...plus I only had two green apples. The wheels started turning...what could be a single serving pie tin? I had a tin from powdered millk but was to tall. Then in a moment of of brillance I thought...a tuna can! Why not?! I cut up an apple and layered the slices in the (really clean) can and sprinkled cinnamon and sugar on top. Then I made a small amount of dough with some flour, salt, sugar and a spoon of crisco. I rolled it out and put it over the mound a apples. I sealed the edges and poked some holes in the top, put it in the "oven" and waited.

Pretty soon it smelled like amazingness. I peaked under the lid and I saw perfectly browned crusty perfection...and it tasted as good as it looked. Apple pie in a tuna can. Amazing.