Panic. Pasta. Perfection

So tonight I was asked my host family to cook, we were all kind of expected to do it but I just never really said anything about it, but thank the lord they asked me yesterday if I was ever going to cook cause MAN WAS IT FUN AND DELICIOUS!

After much stipulation on what in the world to make, with limited oven space, very little parmesean cheese in the country and only an hour, I settled on the Goldstein classic Pasta al Forno. If you've ever been over for dinner chances are you've had this, its short pasta mixed with sauce with mini meatballs and cheese baked in the oven until ooey, gooey and crunchy on top (burnt if Bess or Brett have a say in it). After running around all day, finding an organic, imported goods grocery store by the chance of god, and spending at least 3 times more than anyone else on this trip, I had all necessary ingredients and was ready to cook! Got home at 6:15, later than I would have liked but Simba decided to fill us in- for the first time ever- on what we are gonna be doing for the next few weeks, which I will fill you in on later, jeez just give me a second! And so I was off to a late start. I started with making the sauce, and putting water on to boil. Literally the water took the amount of time to chop everything, make the sauce and meatballs, before it boiled. An eternity! Eventually it began bubbling and I threw the pasta in. As this was happening on the stove, my two helpers Linathi and another sisi were busy on the chocolate covered strawberries.

You're thinking "Woah Great pic Bren!
You should be a photographer" Well, nope. Can you believe my sisi tooks this....she is 6.

I know, kind of a cop out dessert, especially for me, but I was already using the oven for the pasta and they were beautiful and delicious so shut it (they also don't really grow strawberries here, so they were imported from Spain and fucking expensive BUT DELICIOUS! well worth it....I promise dad).

So they made those, I stirred the pasta and the sauce. Threw some olive oil and garlic in a pan for the cauliflower, which the girls helped me turn from ball to mini pieces and- one hour of running around like a mouse cleaning up and mixing and grating cheese and watching the girls steal chocolate off the strawberries and being asked 100 times what I was making by everyone in the house and almost dropping the entire pan of cauliflower and not knowing how to turn the oven to broil or what the fuck 400 degrees is in Celsius- and ka baam! Dinner was on the table! And when I say table, I mean I hand delivered plates to everyone in their rooms cause that is just how it's done here on ol' Zone 7 number 29.

All in all had a total blast cooking with the girls, turned out delicious and was awesome to eat something almost identical to what I remember from home. Italy would have been proud of me tonight.

best friends...(excuse my sweat as it was the work out of my life)

did I get around to study for my xhosa test tomorrow....oops.....