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Shower Chef
Don´t try this at home or ever.... it was a bad idea! We have some time now here in San Isidrio, a nice town three hours away from San Jose. Oh, don´t worry, it still comes with the standard non stop noise that Latinos seem to love at all hours of the day. After another virtually sleepless night listening to idiots race each other in their hotrods, we were awaken from our half hour nap at 5:55 ( I looked) by the fruit stand moron BLASTING music as he opened his store. No, I won´t be buying fruit there.
I have some valuable advice for those of you who like to save a little cash. Don´t try to cook soup in your hotel shower. In the ongoing effort to keep our budget to $50 per day, I thought that our very cool and homemade alcohol burning cat food tin stoves would come in handy to save some cash and get us out of the rut of restaurant food. I bought the alcohol in the pharmacy for 50 cents, 80 proof. So we have the packet of chicken soup and some nice bread and cheese. I pre-safety checked the shower and ran some water so that it would not overheat from the stove. I only put three capfulls of the fuel in, mixed up the soup in the pot, lit the stove and started cooking, happy with my genius and saving money at the same time. A distinctly nice feeling. I was in ready position just in case, water cup full and towel on shoulder to smother. The room quickly heated up to the point that my face was sweating. This is when I realized that the conditions for cooking were perfect, no wind and the stove was insulated by the tile of the shower. This is also when I realized that the room had a smoke detector and the bathroom had a window the size of your hand above the toilet ( I wonder what that is for?). This is also when two thoughts entered my mind... uh, ohhh. As the heat started to build I began to imagine myself being arrested in Central America for starting a hotel fire. If you aren¨t familiar with Latin American law, you are guilty until proven innocent here. Now as I close the door and begin to fan the heat towards that micro window, I suddenly turn to defense lawyer for myself. Yes, Judge, I was cooking soup in the hotel shower. Why? Ummmm, because it costs $1 per bowl in the hotel restaurant and this way it was saving my family a valuable $2.50. You don´t understand, sir? Don¨t you have a family, sir? Anyway, things were not looking good and the fuel just kept on going and going. I worried about putting water on it and thought about smothering it with the towel. How to explain a burned towel? I couldn´t open the door for help because the fire detector would go off. So I fanned like a madman and developed a technique that you could use in case you ever decide to cook in a hotel shower too. If you fold the towel lengthwise and in half you effectively double your fanning power. Unfortunately the window was not helping me out here and the heat was backing up. Plus the double fanning power was also delivering oxygen to the fuel and causing it to burn hotter. You see the delema I am sure. Finally I began to sort of verge on panic at the thought of a Panamanian jail. I had to smother the fire. I took the pot off and attempted to get the pot holder off the stove. It would not budge. So next was to shove something down there to cover the top of the stove. I quickly dropped everything and ran for the toilet paper, ripped off a massive wad and ran back to the shower. I used the t.p to mop up the shower water that I had put in ther for safety and popped the whole thing ontop of the stove. After a sputter and flames shooting out the side of the stove, it died. I had to stay in the sauna that I had created for another half hour, sweating and fanning the heat out before I could open the door and apologize to my family for the stupidity I had just caused them to endure. Some things should just never be attempted and cooking in a third world shower is one of them.
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juan in a million
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jack ass 3 THE MOVIE FROM LATIN AM
What kind of stupid hare brained idea was that? I could see trying to save money in Europe but as cheap as latin america is, why bother. I hope you are never one of my tenants. But thanks for sharing , we all do stupid things.