Thanksgiving and Paracas

Last Wednesday night the six Peru YAVs met at Debbie´s house to begin our November retreat during which we would celebrate Thanksgiving together . We started off the long weekend the right way by going out to eat at a Chili´s restaurant here in Lima. It was a much needed meal for all of us, especially Sean, and after some delicious Fajitas, guacamole, chips, black beans, cooked onions, and NO rice, (it´s really hard to find Mexican food here) I think it´s safe to say we were all feeling pretty satisfied. During the retreat we stayed at the home of the Barreda family where Lynn lived during the first two weeks of orientation here in Lima. Thursday, Thanksgiving day, the six of us returned to Debbie´s to begin cooking our dishes. The three male YAVs (Alex, Sean, and I) decided we would try to combine our powers in the hopes of successfully creating one simple favorite, greenbean cassarole. We soon learned that the local grocercy store did not sell green beans in a can, cream of mushroom soup in a can, or french fried onions in a can. Needless to say we were going to have to use a bit of creativity and extra skill in order to pull it off. And believe it or not, we did! We purchased fresh green beans at the local market, along with some potatos for a garlic mashed potato dish. Alex found a package of powder mushroom soup that we mixed with some milk to make a cream of mushroom substitute. Sean "french cut" the green beans we used for the cassarole, giving the impression that we were more than inexperienced chefs. I deep fried some onions and after an hour or so everything was beginning to look pretty good. Harry Horne, Debbie´s husband, was having the time of his life watching the three of us huddled around the stove trying to figure things out and meanwhile watching onions fry. We all had some good laughs but were soon becoming more and more convinced that this dish was not going to be a total failure. We missed one step that one may or may not consider crucial for a green bean cassarole, that is, we forgot to cook the beans before mixing everything together and baking the thing. So our cassarole was a bit crunchy. I personally liked the crunchiness (maybe only because I felt like I had invested my time and energy into it). The rest of the meal was delicious as well. Leslie prepared an incredible spinach cassarole using ingredients brought from the United States, Lynn found a way to make a variation of pumkin pie using the calabaza (which is a pumkin like vegetable here). So it was like having a squash pie, and it was delicious! Of course there was stuffing, Turkey, mashed potatos, sweet potato cassarole, and other delicious foods as well (I wonder how many times I will use the word delicious in this entry). One of the highlights of the weekend was the food really. I don´t think I ate anything really Peruvian (except for breakfast and some ceviche in Paracas). Speaking of Paracas, that was a whole element of our retreat that was incredible. We took a four hour bus ride south of Lima to Paracas Friday morning and that day went on a boat tour of the islands off the coast of Paracas. The islands are host to sea lions, penguins, whales (I think), turtles, and various different kinds of birds. Check out the photos I posted of this tour since they can do a better job of describing the beauty of the place than I can with words. We also visted a reserve containing beaches of red sand, the location where the Catedral once stood (now gone due to an earthquake that ocurred a little more than a year ago), and heaps of seashells and fossils that clued us in to the fact that part of the area was once under water. If you ever make it to Peru, you should definitely try to visit Paracas.

After rereading this post I realize that food was a priority this weekend.