Fortunately, this time, we will be travelling by car. It will be El Comandante's (that's what name we helped Wilfredo pick for his car) first real trip! It should be way comfier than the bus and, with luck, a little faster than the bus.
Unfortunately for Wilfredo, neither of us drive a manual and really don't want to practice in his brand new car. This means Wilfredo will have to drive the whole way. I have faith in him! :) And, I will do my best not to sleep the whole time and keep him company. I have been stocking up music to entertain us and I'm sure we'll come up with interesting things to talk about.
It will be a big change and, as I said before, we will have to adjust to a new way of life even though it is the same country. I am really looking forward to the experience and should be interesting to see how things are different from last time I was there.
Living with Graciela's family for a much longer time period has been great. I feel like I have actually gotten to know the family, rather than just meet them. Not to say I have them all figured out, not even close, but we make more of a family now.
So, now on to Huanuco to build stronger relationships with the Herreras and the church. :)
But, before we jump to that, we had to squeeze in all those things we have been meaning to do since we'll only be back in Lima for 2 days before we head back to the States. I'm not sure how it came down to this, but we really wanted to cook! I mean, we wanted to do other things too such as Christmas shopping and the paragliding. But for the people that don't cook much or at all when living on their own, we wanted to cook gosh darn it. So we did .. to the good or bad fortune of the family. Haha.
First, because Wilfredo has a brand-spanking-new kitchen, we wanted to make lunch for him. On a subconscious level, it was motivation for him to finally use the kitchen for other than pouring a glass of water or yogurt. He's been there for 3 months and just that day we were pulling the plastic off the oven. Also, he bought his couches and chair, so we got to test those out and see how they looked in the house. I think they are great! For that meal, we made fish, cilantro lime rice, sauteed veggies, and rice. Nothing crazy and not difficult. Well, the hard part was buying the fish. I had never bought a whole fish at the market before that day. We were told to look for fish that don't have clear eyes. So we set out in search of our perfect fish, no other information. We found one and it wasn't crazy expensive and ended up being the right amount of food. The vendor even removed the guts, cut off the head, and cut it into pieces for us. Wilfredo has informed me that for next time I can even ask them to remove the bones. Maybe you learn the other tricks as you buy more fish.. hard to say.Second, we made banana chocolate chispe pancakes. They. Were. Delicious. It was the first, potentially 2nd, time I made pancakes from scratch. No Bisquick nor Krusteaz were used. The batter was simple enough, the experiment came with the banana. We ended up smashing it all up and mixing it with the batter. Best. Idea. Ever. Then, Melissa really wanted chocolate chips in her pancakes, but unfortunately, they don't seem to exist here. Whodda thunk it?! Rocio left on an excursion to see if we just missed them, but all she could scrounge up were these chocolate covered rice crisp sprinkle type things. They sort of did the job, but chocolate chips are definitely preferred. Anyway, we had invited everyone over to try, but only Sandra and Rocio were takers. We enjoyed a feast of pancakes, sausage, scrambled eggs, and pineapple. It was by far the best breakfast I have had in a while. :)
Third, we made chili. This is also something we have not made before, just knew we wanted to eat it. We bought 1.5 kilos of beans for the chili and now I am aware that that is a LOT of beans! We prob used a little over .5 kilo in the chili. They'll be eating beans for a few days yet.. Also, we attempted to buy sausage to include, but whatever we ended up buying was awful. When it was "raw" it was a real deep red and then once cooked for maybe 3 min they were pitch black. They were sorely lacking in flavor and had a chalky texture. Womp womp. However, the rest of it turned out pretty great! It wasn't a spicy chili, I'll have to work on that, but all the fresh veggies and meat and beans made for a tasty lunch. We were also proud of ourselves for making something that fits the parameters for a meal here: (1) it has to be reasonably priced (we got 9 mouths to feed people!), (2) it needs to reheat well, and (3) there needs to be enough to feed people for lunch and for dinner. Quite an accomplishment on our part!
Fourth, we have all of this peanut butter here that my Grandma and Lela coordinated to bring to us, so of course Classic Peanut Butter cookies were in order. They will be a welcome snack for the car ride tomorrow. :) *Excited* This is the first thing I made here that I could prepare basically the same way I would have in the US. It is so nice to do something the way I know how and not have to make major adjustments, btw. The only thing we had to switch up was that the recipe called for baking soda, which also doesn't seem to exist here. Instead, according to the Google, you can just add more baking powder, so that is what we did. I don't know what difference it made, but they turned out dang good!
So, that was our cooking adventure to semi-close this chapter in Callao, Peru with the Carlos, Paz, Yanqui, and Herrera families and the congregations of Monte Sion and Filadelfia.
Shall be interesting to see what tomorrow's road trip and the next 2 months in Huanuco have to teach us!
It seems I was not in the mood to take pics of the things we made, my apologies. Melissa graciously snapped the meal from Wilfredo's. Just imagine all the goodness! ;)
~nos vemos~
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