As many of you know I don’t consider myself a great cook or even a creative one. So imagine my fear and trepidation when Tom announced that the Bishop of the Iringa Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania and his wife were coming for dinner. We have been managing just fine with very simple meals mostly consisting of eggs and sandwiches. Now, I needed to figure out a full dinner menu so I went to all my resources, consisting of several older cook books and even the internet. Every recipe brought more angst as there were at least two items that I couldn’t get here. Finally, we agreed to try to make a chicken dish. We tried the local market and they did have chickens, but frozen solid and the dinner was in four hours. The other option was a live fresh chicken which we would have to kill and then clean and pluck. Again, this was not a realistic plan for two rookies. Then I spied lasagna noodles in a shop and thought even though we couldn’t do all of the layers (no cottage or ricotta cheese) we could do something resembling lasagna. They did have ground beef so we were ready to go. Tom suggested Apple Crisp which I made a week ago but I decided to go with Apple Cake which I had never tried. I spent the afternoon in the kitchen getting the sauce ready (we have an ample supply of roma tomatoes), the meat and then the noodles. Much to my horror, the noodles were very thin and they all stuck together as they boiled. I tried to pry them apart with a fork but they broke into pieces. I tried another box and the same thing happened although I left them to boil and it turned into a big hard clump of lasgana noodles. Now it was time to put it together and the largest noodle I had was one inch by two inches. So, I forged on and layered to the best of my ability certain that this whole thing would be a soupy mess by the time we served it. I added some garlic rolls and fresh fruit and prayed it would taste alright. The Bishop and his wife arrived at 8:00 PM. We all sat down and as I brought the lasagna around, it actually slid out in pieces onto each plate. Thanks be to God! Our guests were very gracious and said they thought it was delicious. One thing about Tanzanians is they love to eat and they try everything. We thought we would be eating lasagna all weekend but the whole 9x13 pan was gone. The rest of the evening was delightful as we relaxed and enjoyed the company!
