Sometimes, we get to craving things that really are not good for us. Maybe it has something to do with eating rice and cabbage so much a month or so ago, but it seems that since that time, we have been getting more creative in our cooking skills. This has led to the creation of a make shift oven. Jason came up with that one. He put bricks on top of our charcoal fire, and then added a lid to a pan, with a pot on top of that, then, a huge kettle is used to keep the heat in. It works great, and we have come up with cookies, and pies that would make the best restaurants green with envy. The charcoal dust just adds to the exotic effects. YUM!

All these baked goods added the fuel to the fire of my determination for something different. One day I sat down and was thinking that I would not mind eating tofu sandwiches on Sabbaths if I just had some mustard to go on the bread. The ketchup here does not taste like ketchup, and the mayo is really disgusting. I have not eaten mustard in years due to it’s unhealthful qualities, but that is what I really wanted to put on my Sabbath sandwiches! I thought about this for quite some time, and then came up with a plan which I put into action. The results of this experiment were startling, and well received by nearly all of us! So, I decided to share the recipe with all of my fellow junk food starved, yet health conscious fellow missionaries. Ready?

Jungle Mustard

1 bulb garlic, pressed with a garlic press (or you could use a pounder)

1 small onion, also pressed

1 really big heaping tablespoon of tumeric

salt

lime juice

flour

If you are in a hurry, you just press the garlic and onion, then throw in some salt and the tumeric. Then you splash some lime juice in there, until it is a bit runny. Then you add flour to make it the right consistency. The more garlic and onion you add, the more bite it has, so we usually don’t stop with just one bulb of garlic. You don’t have to cook it unless you want it to be not so hot. It will be chunky, but we don’t have blenders in the jungle, so you just call it chunky mustard and it will become the new craze! We serve our jungle mustard on bread with fresh tomato and cucumbers, and fresh salted tofu.

Food seems to have a strange attraction when you are away from what we would consider normal variations. Hannah for one gets really concerned about it. Her favorite story right now is when Jesus feeds the five thousand in the bible. She always stops us when we tell her how hungry the people were. She pipes up ” no bread? no rice? NO MILK?????” I assure her that there was no bread, no rice and no milk, and she gets a concerned look on her face until Jesus finally gets around to giving them the bread and fish. Then, she is happy once again.

Right now I am in Cambodia with Andrew. I am working on trying to get another short term visa in order to buy a little time to get a long term solution worked out. If I cannot find a way, I will have to stay out of Thailand.

So what does jungle mustard have to do with visas? Well, it wasn’t until we went without for a while that we learned to make  cookies and pies with what we had available to work with. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. Visa problems might work out to be the same. I would never have gotten a proper long term visa unless I was put into a difficult situation.

There is joy in any situation if you look for it. We can either gripe, or grin!