By Rosie Y.
I confess that the previous night, I went out for Japanese omakase (tasting menu), an 8-course meal that completely stuffed us. It wasn’t planned that way, but it’s ironic that I would begin my GLC fast with an extravagant dinner of abundant and delicious food. By contrast, here’s what I’ll be eating this week (plus chicken soup):
Today was harder than I thought, because I didn’t realize how long it would take to cook the beans (about 2-3 hours, per most online recipes) – so I ended up skipping breakfast and lunch and not eating until dinner. Between lack of sleep and lack of food, it was pretty hard to get through the day – I skipped gym class in the morning but still had to clean the house, go grocery shopping (for tortillas) and make the beans & rice. I truly did not realize until now just how physically affected a body gets when it doesn’t receive enough nourishment. It took a lot to summon up the energy to do simple tasks, like vacuuming. Mentally I was affected also – I kept losing focus and forgetting basic things. At one point I was doing my daily Spanish lesson and I just could not remember the words that I was reviewing, at all. I was surprised by how sluggish and out of it I felt.
Things were better after dinner (around 6 pm) – I was still really tired but reviving a bit. Beans & rice are actually pretty filling, I felt reasonably full after eating and it wasn’t until bedtime that I started getting hungry again.
Here’s the first GLC meal of the week – black beans & rice!
Every recipe I looked up online for Guatemalan black beans & rice included onions, garlic, and other veggies like green peppers. I hesitated but decided to use one onion and some garlic with this – because I couldn’t imagine cooking it without any other flavouring besides salt. That’s not an actual dish, right? And onion and garlic don’t count as real food, they’re really for seasoning. I emailed Barb & Gerry to ask if that’s how they did it in the villages too, and got an answer back after I’d cooked this. More on that in the next post!
For more information about PILAS and Rosie’s trip, please check out her prayer letter and fundraising web page.