Cooking with Wilfred

Most of the food here in Africa is a little bland- lots of rice, beans, lentils, and the same tomato sauce on everything. A few weeks ago though the chef at our Homebase, a quiet man named Wilfred, made the best Veggie burgers that we have EVER had. So of course we had to ask for the recipe and he kindly invited us back to the kitchen today to learn. Before today, I had NO idea how hard this man works...

While lunch isn't until 1:00 PM everyday, we started cooking bright and early at 9:00 AM. About 5 of the volunteers crowded into the small, very basic kitchen to watch Wilfred's every move. He got us straight to work using the dull broken knives in the kitchen to chop and grate vegetables. He is a fabulous cook and made us look pretty terrible because we took 3 times as long as he did to do anything in the kitchen. After lots of chopping, mixing and explaining the recipe in broken English, we cooked the burgers over a charcoal oven on the ground...yes a pot filled with oil over a charcoal fire (yikes!) Then we started making homemade buns for the burgers (the very best part). After a few hours of hard work, we gained a new recipe and a BIG appreciation for modern appliances. It is hard to believe that absolutely everything here is made from scratch with very basic tools, but I think when we repeat the recipe, we will use a food processor.