Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [139]
Warm 2 tablespoons of the oil in a small skillet over medium heat and stir in ½ cup of the bread crumbs. Heat until the bread crumbs just begin to crisp and color lightly, about 2 minutes. Spoon out into a small bowl and reserve for a topping.
Warm the remaining oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Stir in the onion, bell pepper, and garlic. Sauté until the onion is soft and translucent and add the tomato, salt, coconut milk, the remaining ½ cup of bread crumbs, and the 1 tablespoon of molho. Heat until the milk bubbles, then gently stir in the crabmeat. The mixture should be moist but not soupy. If needed, cook just briefly to eliminate excess liquid.
Spoon into the prepared ramekins. Mix the toasted bread crumbs with the cheese and top each ramekin with a portion of the mixture. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until medium brown and crisp. Serve immediately, accompanied by the remaining spicy molho.
LET’S DO IT AGAIN
“SO WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE PLACE?” EVERYONE, FROM OUR CLOSEST FRIENDS to the checkout lady at the grocery store, asks the same natural but impossible question.
After a few stumbling, muddled efforts at an answer, Bill starts saying, “That’s like asking me to name my favorite body part. I’m rather attached to all of them, from my eyeballs to my toes. All the countries are different, like eyes and feet, but each is special in some way.”
Most people, alarmed by the prospect of hearing about every stop, move on to other pleasantries at this point, but some of the intrepid just change tack. “It must have been tough being gone that long. I’m sure you missed home.”
“Didn’t even think about it,” Bill consistently and truthfully replies.
Both more tactful and verbose, Cheryl elaborates when she’s present. “We certainly missed you and the rest of the gang, and coming back feels great, but we were having too much fun to fret about anything.”
“Yeah, that,” Bill says.
Don’t get us wrong. No one we know is fonder of their hometown and their actual, physical home as we are individually and jointly, and each of us regards our families and friends as the most special parts of our lives. But the trip unfolded in fast-forward, like most joyful and vital experiences. Three months seemed like three days, hardly long enough to begin longing for somewhere else.
Maybe a few extra calamities would have made us homesick. Bill lost his ATM card in Bali, as you may remember, and in the Hong Kong airport temporarily misplaced his jacket with our passports, credit cards, and cash, but pickpockets, purse-snatchers, and other thieves left us alone. Beyond our bout with bronchitis in New Caledonia, which dragged us down for a week, and a messy nosebleed Cheryl suffered in South Africa, neither of us got ill. Though the monsoons tormented us in Thailand, and a mistral blew through Provence, bad weather didn’t disrupt many days on the whole and the balmy temperatures never brought out bothersome bugs. Our cache of antibiotics, first-aid supplies, insect repellents, and other precautionary paraphernalia sat mostly unused at the bottom of our bags.
A marauding monkey kidnapped the original Flat Stanley early in the trip, but his stand-in soul mate suffered no mishaps on the rest of the journey and now enjoys the care of his creator, our granddaughter Bronwyn, who keeps him with his official photo album and bag of miniature souvenirs. When Cheryl started telling the seven-year-old about the abduction, Bronwyn focused immediately not on Stanley’s fate but on the courageous struggle her grandmother waged on his behalf against the jungle beast. In relating the tale to her first-grade classmates, Bronwyn depicted Cheryl as Wonder Woman, a superhero who never flinched in the face of evil.
“You got lucky on that one,” Bill says.
Except sometimes for quirky Qantas, the ONEworld and other airlines treated us well, providing comfortable seating and commendable service on most flights, even the long-haul