baking cakes

Egads, the last month has been an all out sprint to the finish.  I've got a ticket booked for August 12th to head back to the USA...and wrapping up fieldwork has been intense!  At this point, I feel like I'm overcommitted with interviews and meetings, trying to squeeze last-minute field visits in whenever I can.

So...no weekends off at this point.  Luckily, Saturday's trip out to the settlement was at least less serious than most.  After baking cakes for the baptism party of one of my contacts, apparently the whole neighborhood was atwitter...and requesting cake baking classes.  So after checking up on the neighborhood lunch program and talking shop with the two microfinance groups, we set about the task of baking a chocolate cake.  Actually...giving cooking classes in another language and with sort of dodgy facilities was more challenging than I expected.  But my group of students was good natured [and we got some good dialogue about credit and development in between separating eggs and sifting cocoa powder].

But "Iron Chef" kitchen stadium this was not:

But fueled by tereré and good spirits, we managed to make a pretty good approximation.  With a slightly battered 14"(ish?) cake pan I was terrified that we'd end up with chocolate catastrophe...but it turned out quite lovely (especially with some chocolate ganache to spackle some of the crumbs in place).  Good thing I went with the monster large recipe!

And now that I am making friends with the locals, it seems as though more and more my interviews/visits have included a gander through the family photo album.  Which is *great* for an anthropologist taking genealogies/life histories.  But makes for a marathon day after a long baking class.  But...no rest for the weary anthropologist, especially with less than three weeks to finish up!  Hopefully Ña G. will have a bit of leftover chocolate cake on Monday when I come back for the formal interview and the second set of photo albums.


p.s. the little yellow VW Bug motored away to its new home today.  For a car that I would have, on many occasions, very willingly pushed over the side of the bridge into the Paraná river, I was surprisingly sentimental about letting it go.  Goodbye fusca!  Safe travels and open roads...sniff sniff sniff!