Enchilada Fail

It's no secret that Indonesians don't do dairy. They have no use for it and, frankly, most of them think we're off our rockers for "needing" it. After tasting all the dairy options here (from milk to cheese to everything else) I'm beginning to see their point.

We've yet to discover a milk option that we can stomach. No Jersey cows grazing happily in green fields here.

We've tried fresh milk from the cow. I don't mean milk from Bessie. I mean some strange, unknown species of cow that stands in a stanchion eating nutrition-less jungle grass all day. That milk didn't taste bad, but not great either and it was a lot of work for us when we got it - boiling, cooling, skimming. Half the time we'd forget we'd put it on to boil and we'd ruin the whole batch. And then sometimes we'd just get a bad batch. There is nothing quite as horrible as three liters of curdled milk.

We've tried powdered milk. Ew. Ew. and Ew.

We've tried UHT milk. I'm not going to spend a lot of time explaining why that isn't my favorite option either. But I will say that there's something wrong with milk that will sit on a shelf for 10 years. We've done research online and so far haven't read any scientific data that supports my theory that it will cause the emergence of a third eye...so that's what we're drinking these days.

The cheese is worse.

I've been diligently searching for a palatable brand of cheddar cheese for four months. So far I'm 0 for 22.

Take tonight, for example. I decided it was time for some real Mexican food. I made the Enchilada sauce and shredded a ton of a yet untried brand of cheddar. It didn't taste all that bad. I put the enchiladas in the oven to melt the cheese...and I waited. And I waited. And I waited. Every time I checked on it, the cheese remained unchanged. It was not melting. Not even a little bit. I turned on the broiler. I blasted the pan with a blow torch. Okay, not that last one, but I wanted to. The blow torch wasn't handy.

I also made a batch of quesadillas for the girls since the enchilada sauce is kinda spicy. I ran out of the new cheddar so I put a little bit of another kind of cheddar that I had in the freezer on the top.

Eventually, we had to eat, so I gave up on trying to melt that top bit of cheese on the enchiladas and called everyone to the table.

"What's that smell?"

"Ew, my food stinks, Mommy!"

"What is that?"

The cheese did not melt. It did not melt at all. Not on the top, not in the middle. It was just a white rubber that resembled shredded cheese. In case you doubt my ability to light a gas oven, the tortillas were burned and the sauce was scalded, so yes the oven was on.

And the cheese from the freezer? How to explain such a smell? Stinky feet? The inside of Sean's shoes? The bottom of the garbage pail? The gutter next to the meat market in town? Stinky feet soaked in gutter juice blended with a rat that died in the bottom of garbage pail?

We all tried to eat it. I had, after all, used up 1/4 cup of some very valuable New Mexico chili powder.

It couldn't be done.

Instead, we all put on our rain gear and our helmets, squished onto the scooter, and drove to the closest restaurant for a meal we could eat without closing our eyes and pinching our noses.

After seeing the meat markets here and tasting the diary options, I'm this close to just calling it quits and becoming a vegan.

I have to admit the tofu and tempeh in this country is actually quite good.