Snow White and Kiln Bread

Today was the children’s play. The date was changed three times, which means today was the third time a group of my students missed school for “last day prep and rehearsal.” The play was hilarious. They did a version of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” in which the evil queen’s assistant and master of torture was colorful and flamboyant, the dwarves were named after weekdays, the smallest dwarf had a crush on Snow White, and the dwarves carried away the evil queen while chanting (in English) “Down with dictator!” At the end they held up a sign (also in English) that said “The And.” Gio probabally should have asked me about that one…

I was sick again last night and this morning, probably because I was at a birthday party in a strange house yesterday. I’ve figured out that I can eat at five houses without getting sick. Anywhere else, I’m doomed.

Saturday, the weather was warmish, so we cleaned the yard. We swept up leaves, weeded around flowerbeds, and planted tomato seeds (under a plastic dome to keep them warm). Then Maguala taught me how to make kiln bread. The dough is just flour, salt, yeast and water. The kiln is in our yard. It has a clay tube in the center, with stones cemented around it. Maguala lit a big fire to warm the clay, and then we waited for the fire to burn down. When it was low, she laid thin bricks around the edges of the embers, to catch falling bread. Yup. Falling bread. To cook the bread, she took each loaf and patted it into a thin oval. She dipped her fingers in water and poked the loaves with them. Then she slapped them to the sides of the clay tube, poking the middle of each with a fork once it was suspended on the wall. Two of the loaves had butter and ground walnuts in the middle. She fit 11 loaves in the kiln, and left them to cook for 10-15 minutes. Then she covered the mouth of the kiln with a metal lid for another 10-15 minutes. When the loaves were finished, she pried them off the kiln walls with a big knife (at which point the flat bricks on the embers became important). Yum.