Cooking:Reason 1 of 7 to Come Back

After attending a required seminar on "reverse culture shock: re-entry into the united states", and found the advice pretty useless, I decided to take matter into my own hands and deal with the inevitable disappointment the best way i know how- making a list. I'm thinking of the little things that Im looking forward to at home. So far the list is fairly short:

• free texting
• minimal overt prostitution
• no school
• Ocean City
• no smoking in public buildings
• COOKING

I cannot wait to... 1. choose what I eat instead of the (admittedly exciting) surprise of what is waiting for me every night for dinner. My host mom has pulled out some doozies over the past few months i.e. mayonnaise with vegetables (and not the other way around) or boiled zucchini filled with hardboiled egg, gogi berries, and vineagar... there have been a lot of non-gross things too. Aside from previus rampages on cupcakes and bagels, Im currently obsessing over grilled food. Id literally take anything grilled (almost). I dream about the smokey charred barbeque flavor. yummm.

2.Cook the things I want. Im taking full advantage of the opportunity to cook while im here and make a "thank you" dinner for my host mom and daughters (yes, this invitation includes baby Tomas too) I tried to think of an American menu, but at the same time, nothing too boring or fast-foody. Ive decided on the following:

Turkey burgers with a mango avocado salsa* Side of spiced sweet potato fries* Summer cucumber and tomato salad* S'mores (microwaved-style unfortunately)

...As you can expect, Im beyond excited. Next, Im going to exploit the inexposure of my spanish friends to peanut butter. Some have tried it (and not liked it) and other are afraid. (They compared the strangeness of a spanish favorite to PB&Js: melon with ham on top.) I am thinking they have just not tried the appropriate proportions of PB to J, so im organizing a picnic in the park where ill bring mini pbj and grilled cheese sandwiches for my little cultural experiment. Yeah- it isnt much of cooking, but it's the closest im going to get, so ill take it.

According to my hosing agreement we are provided with breakfast and dinner, and no "kitchen rights" aka no cooking....but of course ive eased into it :) STAGE1: no cooking, occasional sandwhich assembly STAGE2: salads which involve chopping on the cutting board STAGE3: Elvira bought be stove-top oatmeal which meant it was socially acceptable to use the stove to boil stuff. And in 2 or 3 weeks when I make Elvira's thank you dinner, Ill have progressed into full-fledged cooking mode.

3. Im especially excited to return home to try out the recipes Ive accumulated on my travels. I have a Moroccan soup recipe from the peace corps friends we met there, a paella recipe from my intercambio's mom, and then I told Elvira that I will be stealing a wole box of recipes from her before I leave-- she is the queen of soups. Im really regretting not getting the recipes from the Chinese family that hosted me for dinner one night while I was there!!!