To celebrate Eid Eve, the Day after Labor Day and the Jewish New Year — and I venture to say no other group of people on the planet had that combination of events in mind at the same event — we invited over five people for …

Mexican food!

They hardly do Mexican in the Abu Dhabi or the UAE. Though some insist/suggest that a decent Mexican restaurant is operating in the Khaladiyah Mall here in the capital …

As Southern Californians, we are Mexican food snobs. We expect it to be created (or at least overseen) by genuine Mexicans or their immediate descendants, and made with the same ingredients we would find south of the border. When we get half a world away from Mexico, we are Just Plain Skeptical that acceptable Mexican can be had at any price.

So, this is what we cobbled together …

Two kinds of chili!

Leah purchased a kilo (2.2 pounds) of beef that the butcher at Lulu’s ground up on the spot. Then she picked up a batch of kidney beans, tomatoes, spices like cumin and cinnamon. This was for the red chili.

And then for the green, she made a special trip to Spinneys, a store that caters to expats and has a pork area in a special, almost hidden corner of the store. She bought 1.5 kilos of  pork (3.3 pounds) and mixed that with tomatillos and … some other stuff.

The night before the event, she cooked the meat, mixed in the ingredients and began simmering the pots of chili. At the end of the night, she put both pots into the fridge and the next morning raked off the layer of fat that had formed at the top of each pot. Then back into the fridge.

Then it got a bit trickier … and almost dangerous.

I had the day off, while Leah returned to work, and I was entrusted with the job of pulling the two pots of chili outta the fridge, and heating them up a few hours before people were scheduled to arrive. Thing was, I had never used this oven (gas), and I struggled to light it.

This is a true, if embarrassing story. I had Leah on the phone as I stood before the stove, and was following her instructions. I turned the gas for a couple of burners to the “9 o’clock” position and started pushing the “click-click-clicker” that creates the spark to light the gas. But nothing was happening.

Turns out, I had two issues. For one, I had not lifted up the plastic covering for the burners. At my mom’s house, in Long Beach, we use an electric stove in which you see no flames and whatever you’re heating is sitting on top of a glowing-hot sheet of plastic, so it didn’t seem weird to me that this quarter-inch of plastic was between me and the burners.

Second, the “clicker” didn’t work unless I flipped a switch on the wall (huh?) — which I didn’t know and hadn’t done.

So, I can hear the gas hissing … maybe a minute of this … and nothing is happening. Leah tells me, via phone, that I need to flip the switch for the clicker. Oh …

And so I did, and took the few steps back and pushed the button for the clicker and … bam. Yes. Bam!

The gas that had collected under the plastic top flamed all at once, and it was a teeny little explosion. It rattled the kitchen, as well as me. After the initial shock of the big bang, what caught my attention were the flames licking out from the plastic cover left and right. The blue flame on the left seemed about to set alight the wicker basket in which my vitamins were stored, which would be a major loss. But I grabbed the basket and moved it to safety, and then turned off all the gas, and the flames eventually petered out.

Now rattled, I was ready to wait for Leah to arrive home and deal with this. But she had me go down 14 floors to find one of the building managers, and I managed to ask him to come up to “show me how to light the stove” without feeling overwhelming shame because, hey, I’d almost blown up the building and I needed help.

The guy got into the kitchen, flipped the switch for the gas, flipped the switch for the clicker and (this is key) lifted up the plastic that had been covering the stove. Worked just fine then.

He left, and I warmed up the chili … and when Leah came in she created guacamole and salsa from scratch. And made a salad of corn and beans (for color, as much as anything), and a salad, and put out sour cream … and I ordered a boatload of steamed rice from the Indian restaurant.

And we were good to go.

Three co-workers came by, and two wives (from Russia and Colombia, to bring additional internationalism to the event), and I toasted “Eid Eve, Labor Day past and also, happy Jewish new year!”

Thing seemed to go well enough after that. The chili certainly tasted legit, and was well-received by the guests, and we didn’t come close to another explosion.

It also marked our last night in the Big Apartment, the one in which we house-sat for most of the summer. A place big enough to absorb more than two people … and with a real kitchen.

So, now, back to the Teeny Apartment, where we will resume the ongoing battles against floods, bugs and mold … pretty much the 12 plagues of Egypt.