Instead, we spend the whole day with Mariet, Conche and the rest of the extended family, while I cook dinner in their kitchen.
We turn up with ingredients for spaghetti Bolognese and apple and blackberry crumble, and all eyes are on me as I attempt to cook with the bizarre assortment of utensils I can find in their home. Mexicans eat lunch very late, but most of them would baulk at finally sitting down at 5pm to eat a midday meal. The day, however, just seems to get longer and longer.
The spaghetti gets plenty of time to simmer, while various members of the extended family wander in and out. I can’t work out who I am cooking for, Mariet is trying to make a cake for 100 people at the same time, and Itamar keeps wanting me to go out and play with some balloons.
I run into slight trouble for cooking with wine – but explain quickly that the alcohol burns off and it is “just for the taste”, but then I am horribly tempted to add the rest of the wine at the end and see what happens. When we finally sit down to eat, Conche scoops up spaghetti and sauce in a tortilla, whilst munching on some chicken bones at the same time. Some of the rest of the family look bemused, and others want second helpings. All in all, I think it is a success, but it is so late to eat that I’m no longer hungry.
Daisy does not help the situation by having a bad day. She throws up, screams and then throws up some more. She then continues to be slightly sick all afternoon whilst grinning away at everyone inbetween times. Despite the fact that she’s obviously happy, her paranoid mother is still glad to take her home at the end of the evening.
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