been a while since i posted, been busy and tired. last few days have been pretty good. Chris, the "chef" i met at the party, is hanging out with us now, cooking. he is helping me with my shitty kitchen, making it better, showing me some things, making suggestions, which i really appreciate. he is also doing lots of coke, in addition to his regular percosets and alcohol. he and TOPS get along great.

TAS and Simona, the dealers who lived above the bar, left town. Simona was the italian chick who gave me weed for my food, and TAS was the guatemalan guy who lived with her. he owns a small restaurant down the street, and had a restraining order for beating his wife, who he was still married to. For thier last night, they had a small going away party, complete with crack, coke, weed, and booze. TOPS hung out with them all night, chris would go back and do lines now and again, i ran the bar. They offered me coke, lots of coke, i politely refused.
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i'm starting to feel relaxed and comfortable, i´m becomming local. I walk down the streets and see the same folks, they say hello, they know me. it´s wierd to be in a foreign country and still walk around town and have people know you.

yesterday, went in to work, TOPS said we are invited to the weekly party at Franks, and we are going. Frank is the business hippy who owns the huge "local arts store" and has like, 60 indiginous people working for him, weaving, carving, making the arts. He owns a few houses, is going to open up a restaurant or something, guy is loaded. you look at him, he has dirty ripped jeans, old converse, long hippy hair, and is usually stoned.

so we went to his house on the mountain. holy. fucking. shit. its a fucking compound, with an organic garden, a sauna house, a main house, and a view of all of antigua, guatemala, and the volcanos. dude owns the top of a mountain. really, holy shit.

so TOPS gave...

not a bad day yesterday, in fact, there was a point when the music was playing, people were eating my food, there was lots of talking, where it all came together and felt really really really cool. it is for those brief and fleeting moments i am doing what i do. and the highpoint of the day was i got the third burner of the stove working, so now i have three burners. WHOO!

some british chick came to the bar, got all sorts of fucked up, started getting behind the bar and serving drinks, tried to cook in my kitchen, it was hilarious. until she sold drinks to these two assholes. more on that later.

prior to that, we had no beer, TOPS didnt get beer, we are a bar, we have no beer, it´s more wrong than two boys fucking in church. finally some beer came and all was almost well. hopefully today we will get a delivery. TOPS was sober for most of the day, he had run out of weed, so he wasnt his usualy happy self, but he was alright. Later at night he found...

yesterday wasnt too bad. the highpoint of my day was when i went to the market and found fresh local mushrooms. i bought a bunch and made a white wine mushroom cream sauce, which came out pretty damn kick ass.

TOPS "hired" some 15 year old guatemalan girl to come in in the morning and clean, and she comes with me to the market when i get the day's food. she speaks no english, and doesnt understand my spanish, and i dont understand her. she follows me around, i ask her what stuff is, she asks the old lady selling whatever it is what it is, she tells me like i couldnt hear the lady or ask her myself, i buy it, put it in the bag, she carries it. nice system we have.

so i´m walking around the market, the big gringo followed by his little local servant girl carrying his stuff, weaving my way through women with babies on thier backs and baskets of food on thier heads, guys screaming about "best price," boys asking if i want my shoes...

Yesterday sucked ass, but at least ended on a sort of good note.

Its like i´m stuck in some "top chef" challenge: make an awesome meal using only one pan, one pot, shitty ingredients, and a shitty two burner camp stove. Thing is, if i really knew what the fuck i was doing, I could. I bet Tom Keller could turn out an awesome meal in my shithole kitchen. i would love to blame it on the kitchen, and i maybe can a little bit, but really, its just me.

For some fucking reason, even if i do things the exact same way, the food comes out different each time. there is no consistency. any moron can make one good meal. it takes skill to produce that meal over and over and over, each time. i dont know why i cant. is it the food iteself? the shitty ass pot and pan? what the fuck is wrong?

so i made fried rice yesterday, it tasted really good. rice was sticky, flavors were straight out of some chinese food stall in a mall. TOPS didnt...