Sírvete!

In the last post, I mentioned that I have liked almost everything that I have eaten in Peru.  To give you all some idea of what I’m eating here at training…

-Like many other countries, lunch is the biggest meal of the day, and big by Peruvian standards is HUGE.  If I eat lunch at home it usually involves two plates.  For example, my lunch today was spaghetti with sauce, a piece of chicken about the size of my fist, and a separate (full) plate of lentils with rice.  Overeating is definitely socially encouraged.  Every Monday in my family and for many families across Peru is lentils day.

-My family eats chicken about 4-5 days out of the week, which is awesome for me.  Fish about once a week, and (red) meat about once a week.  Peruvians only consider red meat to be meat, so when I asked my madre if meat was in the lentils, she said “No, its only lentils, carrots, ham…” so I laughed and said that ham counts as meat to me.  She responded back “Well then it’s chicken.  You love chicken, right? It’s chicken.”  She’s quite the jokester.

Things I’ve tried:

-Chicha morada: a dark “juice” made from corn… I think it’s technically fermented but it’s not alcoholic? I dunno, I don’t understand these things.  The one I tried had fig in it too, and it was really good- tasted kind of like sweet black licourice (sp?).

-Pachamanga: a tradition from the selva (rainforest), a hole is made in the ground and rocks are heated until they are red hot.  Then various meats, chicken, potatoes, and other vegetables are covered with leaves, spices, and buried, and cooked for an hour.  The result is an AWESOME smokey taste, that I got to try when a family member brought some home from a birthday party.  The yucca was to die for.

-“Quaker”: many Peruvians serve oatmeal as a drink, so they mix oatmeal (get it? Quaker?) with more water or milk than we are used to.  It’s pretty good, and is pronounced with a Latin accent as “kwah-ker.”

-Mazamorra: A great winter drink that I just tried for the first time tonight, made of corn, peanuts, milk, and cinnamon.  Yummmm so good.

-Lots of weird fruits: I’m forgetting the names of them, but there two kinds of “booger fruit,” as we call it- they looks a bit like oranges from the outside but when you peel back the skin it is all gelatinous juice and seeds inside.  It looks somewhere in between boogers and alien eggs, but it tastes really good! One version tastes like a plum and the other tastes like Tang.

-Plátanos, fried yucca: YUM YUM YUM

-Inca Kola: the preferred drink of Peruvians in pretty much all settings that don’t involve alcohol.  Is ridiculously sweet, tastes like bubblegum.

Which reminds me, check out this video featuring Inca Kola, pachamanga, ceviche (which I haven't tried in Peru yet) and other great Peruvian things.  The video is part of a big Peruvian tourism promotion, in which Peruvians go to a tiny town called Peru, Nebraska to teach them about Peruvian customs. (sorry it's in Spanish, but you'll get the general gist)

The bad parts of food here:

-Even though a lot of coffee is grown in Peru, drip coffee from ground beans is hard to find.  Everyone drinks instant coffee.

-Everything has about 4 more scoops of sugar in it than I would prefer, but I am quickly getting accustomed to the sweetness, especially with Inca Kola.

-All the packaged snack foods I’ve tried, like chips and cheese puffs, are stale.

-Similar to the above bullet, most chocolate bars leave something to be desired, they sometimes kind of tasteless and stale.

-So. Much. Rice.

This is just my experience so far in Chaclacayo at training, and most likely I will be eating a lot more potatoes and a lot less chicken at site.  As you can tell, overall I am really enjoying the food here.  Everything homemade is awesome.  People (the women) spend all day preparing lunch and dinner, and as my madre says, a lot of “cariño” goes into cooking.  I’m definitely going to be a gordita in no time!