Cooking in Grenada

I'm living in the "Island of Spice", the "Spice Isle", cooking should be exciting and interesting right? All these choices and new spices to make things with... so much so that the only mall is actually called "Spiceland Mall"...
First off if you ask a local I've been told that the answer you get is just something along the lines of "oh yeah, you just mix them in!" uh.. yes ok. I am an engineer here, I need specifics, the more the better. What spices? How much of each? With what? Oh and seeing as Grenada provides 80% of the world's Nutmeg you'd think there would be a million and one recipes with it here... or not. So far I have found locally made nutmeg syrup and that's it. So far I have yet to hear of a single recipe to use it with. hmm so apparently Grenada just sells CRAP LOADS of it to the rest of the world and doesn't bother to mess with it themselves... or if they do mess with it, it's so simple to use in their minds that no one spreads the word around.
Megan hates to cook. I know hate is a strong word, and trust me I am correct in saying she hates to cook. Now I quite enjoy it, particularly when I am able to make something complicated that turns out good, (and looks cool too, casseroles do NOT fit in this category). With my love's diversion from cooking, I naturally do all the cooking in the house. The problem is my skills have been limited to the basics, and I mean truly basic basics. For example, I can make a mean batch of Mac'n Cheese, Tacos? No problem!, a hamburger? Check!, Burritos? I am ALL over that!
Now what about something more complicated, Enchiladas? a taco with canned red sauce on it and baked, not exactly gourmet. Megan got a little worried last week when she saw I bought a can of diced tomatoes... "um Honey?? what are these for?" ... yes quite, scary an almost bare, "from scratch", cooking ingredient, but I assured her not to worry, it was for the pre-packaged, pre-seasoned, pre-measured box of rice-a-roni; absolutely no room for creativity.
Last week I attempted my first steak dinner. Being from southern California as far as I am concerned there is only three types of beef: Fillet mignon, tri-tip, and ground. So wandering through the meat section I knew there was no chance in hell of finding tri-tip, if I can't get it in Michigan then it's completely hopeless to find it here. I picked up what most closely resembled a fillet mignon, it was round, about a 1/3 of an inch thick and very little fat. Now the time comes to cook this... hmm... using a pan on the stove top way seemed like the best as I could monitor it's cooking easily.
OK side step - There's another reason I avoided sticking it in the oven. That's because our oven has no temperature markings on the handle. Thanks to a oven thermometer my mom sent I now know the highest setting "8" - after an hour is 350 F. As if 80-85 with near 100% humidity wasn't toasty enough let's turn this very poorly insulated (aka all the heat escapes) oven on for an HOUR, just to get it to temperature! To then be followed by another hour or what ever to actually cook the meal.
Back to the steak dinner. At this point all I had was BBQ sauce and pan frying a steak with BBQ sauce sounded like a bad idea. I was picturing lots of burned BBQ sauce. So i cooked it as it was, planning on adding the BBQ sauce after. Also you have to remember meat on this island is always a bit questionable. The meat was from the US and packed by a local store (the one that does NOT turn it's refrigerators off at night, unlike the one down the road), so I wasn't toooo worried but just in case and also to calm my ever food worried wife, I made sure that the steak was well done. Now it could have been the steak or it could have been the chef. Either way it was a tough steak to say the least, but still edible. The complete lack of seasoning topped off the bad meal, drowning it in BBQ sauce only helped a little. So one failed attempt at a steak dinner. Considering I've never seen a recipe on how to cook a steak nor ever been taught my anyone I just figured oh well, it's a lesson learned.
When cooking chicken baking leaves the chicken nice and moist usually, so for my second attempt I figured this was the way to go. I lit the oven put two washed and poked potato's into it and headed off to the store for a few things. I returned an hour later (on foot and two stores later), to put the steak in the oven. I picked up some "all purpose seasoning" at the store as this was the only seasoning they had except for a few individual herbs which I was clueless about how to use. I had seasoned the steak on Tuesday night expecting to eat it Wednesday, due to unexpected events the dinner was pushed till tonight, Friday night. I put the very seasoned steak in the oven and figured 20 minutes was a good place to start because based on "Shake-n-Bake" boneless chicken breasts cook at 400 for 20-25 minutes. This dinner at least made the kitchen smell quite nice. 20 minutes later i removed the steak and knew for sure it was already well done. The potato's had been in the oven for an hour and a half, should be no reason to worry there. My very traditional steak and the potatoes looked good, and smelled good, but that's about all it was worth. I took one bite of the steak and spit it out after gnawing on it for a while and determining it would be better suited as a door stop then as dinner. Whatever, I had a huge potato to eat still, cutting this open I quickly found it to be hard, and UNCOOKED. UGH!!! so.... the corn was good! I made Megan something safe, a grilled cheese and called it a night. It may be awhile before I attempt another door stop dinner.
It's hard to get motivated to cook complicated dinners when (with my wonderful chef skills) they turn out like Frisbee's and door stops rather then food. Especially when grilled cheese and soup only takes about 10 minutes. :)
I am determined that at some point in the three years down here I will find a use for nutmeg, i need to get past the steak first though.
Life is an adventure here, some days good, some days not so much. Every day though is interesting and different then the last.
Oh and something to look forward to... Sunday Megan, I, and hopefully Ashley and Katie too, are going to the Grand Etang National Forrest to see Mona Monkeys! whoo hoo! I will have my camera ready for sure! You can look for that post soon.

If you curious about the slow down in my posts it is more a factor of my schedule then of not having something to write about. Everyone is assuming that I am sitting on the beach drinking Mai-Tai's (which I hear is a Hawaiian drink not Caribbean anyhow). In reality I am busy as can be. I am taking two online classes which is full time for this grad program and trust me I could be busy doing nothing other then this MBA. In addition I am working about 20 hours a week still for Zebra online, while doing the laundry, cooking the meals, taking care of the dogs, and generally trying my best to keep my Vet student wife from going insane from her studies. So I am sad to say but my posts will be fewer and further between as I struggle to keep up with life. I do have a few more posts on my mind, i'll get them down soon as I get a chance. I'll make sure to get the monkeys up ASAP though.
~Kris