Bake Around the World: Write in the Kitchen, Palau, Aho and Scene Setting

This year, I am endeavoring on a monthly challenge to bake around the world; write in the kitchen. The idea is inspired by Erin, my friend and author of This Footprint blog (IG @thisfootprint_blog) who participated in a cooking challenge for every country. Each month, I will randomly select a country and make a vegan version of a traditional dessert from that nation. And, each month, I will put intentional time into writing at least one non-Smile Project related piece. I look forward to expanding my confectionary acumen and baking around the world. And I look forward to sitting closer to home, writing for myself.

Sitting in the conference room in my work office with three colleagues, two of which have already helped me select a country. I spin my computer, open with the random country generator wheel to my final teammate—pick August’s country! Palau. 

Palau is by far the least populated country I’ve tackled thus far. With their populations—Gabon (2.5 million), Grenada (117,207), Colombia (52.9 million), Nigeria (232.7 million), Albania (2.7 million), China (1.4 billion), Yemen (40.6 million), and… Palau (17,695). My hometown in the suburbs of Pittsburgh is double that.

My knowledge of Palau prior to this month was that it was a small Pacific island (so my first country in Oceania). But I didn’t realize how tiny (177 square miles). For reference, the five boroughs of New York City—the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island—combined are 468 square miles (though Manhattan alone is only 22.8 square miles. My borough (Queens) is 108 square miles. So now that I had my bearings (the area of Queens with half the population of my hometown), I was ready to dig in.

Palau consists of 340 coral and volcanic islands in the western Pacific Ocean (north of Indonesia and east of the Philippines). Palau has a tropical climate and rich and diverse flora and fauna. Per Brittanica, Palau was a member of the UN Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands—esablished in 1947 and administered by the U.S. The trusteeship was dissolved in 1986 and “repeated measures to win the required support for a compact of free association between Palau and the United States were unsuccessful until 1993.” The Republic of Palau only became a sovereign state on October 1, 1994 making it, just a hair, younger than me.

The largest city in Palau is Koror (approximately 65% of the population (11,000 or so) live here) and the capital is Melekeok (according to a 2020 census, just over 300 people live here). In the past few years, I’ve become increasingly interested in small, remote communities—be it an island nation or an isolated Arctic Circle community. Digging into Palau was a really fascinating and exciting thing as it’s the country I’ve known the least about thus far in the baking challenge.

The major employer in Palau is government—first the U.S. Navy, then the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and now the independent government of Palau. But in rural areas, subsistence economy is most common with people gathering and cultivating taro, sweet potato, and cassava. Fishing and tending pigs are also an important part of Palauan culture (and cuisine). 

As I do when the country is selected, I searched “traditional Palau desserts” to begin my recipe hunting. Because Palau is the smallest nation yet, I wasn’t immediately hit with blogs or lists. I dug a little deeper and found a 57 second TikTok video from three years ago for Aho (coconut soup dessert). Thank you to Mina from _raisingsunshine for the inspiration and the recipe.

The recipe is simple—it only took about 20 minutes to pull together one night last week… what took us some time was finding young coconut meat. I finally stopped by a smoothie place near my office in midtown Manhattan and realized they sell whole coconuts and will cut them up for you. I think most of the time people just want the water but I was after the coconut meat. From there, you make coconut mochi balls and drop them into a sweetened coconut soup. It was warm and cozy and simple (and the pictures really don’t do it justice!)

With my coconut soup happily consumed, I sat down to do the writing portion of the monthly ritual. I’ve been feeling a little disconnected from creative work lately. In truth, my schedule has felt so packed and I’ve felt like I’ve been trying to catch up on all things personal and professional. So when I sat down to write, I wasn’t sure what would happen.

What happened was a reflection on that through the eyes of a writer in their mid-40s. It’s a forgiving look at what it’s like to not know where to begin a story, to do character studies and world building and then still feel like you don’t have much to show from it. It tackles the idea of being able to create entire fantasy worlds out of nothing as a child but somehow losing some of that imagination as candles fill our birthday cakes. 

As I sit on this last day of August, mindful of a busy fall to come and also eager to give myself the time and space to recharge, I find myself thinking of the reasons I’m loving this monthly routine. To bake something I’ve never heard of from a country I know little about. To force myself to sit and write even when I don’t feel like it, even when I feel low on creative energy. And where I’ve landed is that it is a privilege to be able to pursue hobbies like this—to write even when it’s bad. To bake with ingredients you don’t typically use (hi, sweet rice flour). To learn for the fun of it. To expand because we can.

January: to beignets and book proposals (Gabon)

February: to spice cake and sunscreen (Grenada)

March: to rice pudding and Gregory (Colombia)

April: to puff puffs and how we relate (Nigeria)

May: to shendetlie and choosing new endings (Albania)

June: to mooncakes and steadiness (China)

July: to khaliat nahal and community (Yemen)

August: to aho and scene setting (Palau)

Scene Set

Frito walked across my keyboard, meowing with feigned hunger, it being only 90 minutes past breakfast. I wondered if he was judging me. I wondered if he thought it silly that I would try to write a story set in a country I spent one week in a decade ago. I wanted to tell Frito about the way the sky seems endless in Astana. I wanted to write about mall culture in Central Asia and the way nighttime desert air makes you regret sunny afternoon sandals.