Eat your heart out, Mr. Bourdain

Dear Anthony,
I just want to start by saying how much I enjoy your show, ¨No Reservations¨. Though I grew up on a mainly meat-free diet, watching you risk your digestive health by popping a chunk of wild boar intestine still flecked with partially digested herbiage into your mouth inspired in me a sense of adventure (as well as a slight gag relfex), which I try to live by as I encounter the foods of Ecuador. I realize you already did a show on Ecuador right before I embarked on my stint here, but after living here for a year, I would like to offer some suggestions for your next piece, if you ever decide to return.
The locals here proudly refer to themselves as ¨carnivoras¨, a word which is fairly self explanatory. After participating in the preparation of and sampling some of their dishes, I now include myself in that category, a fact which might shock some of the folks back home. Top of my list of best Ecuadorian foods is a dish called fritatta, a lovely concoction made by frying chunks of pork in their own fat mixed with green onions, garlic, and salt.



Though the street fritatta is tasty, I highly recommend the homemade version, prepared from pork bought at the local butcher shop down the street and so fresh the trichinosis parasites are still wriggling. The smell alone of the cooking meat will draw surrounding neighbors like flies, whom you can then put to work washing dishes or peeling habbas (after offering them a dish, of course).





A less tasty but still interesting dish is ´cuero´, which means ´skin´in english. The skin of a pig is boiled and fried, then served with an assortment of side dishes. My favorite accompaniments are chochos, tostada, and tomatoes and onions with lime and salt.



Chochos are a type of white bean, and tostada is toasted and salted corn kernels (made the same way as popcorn but using feed corn instead). As always, it´s better to share these experiences with good friends (you can make them take the first bite).



Yuagra locro is favorite with the locals, and is a soup with a fairly innocent appearance. But don´t let that creamy facade fool you. Hidden beneath the surface are chunks of cow intestine, and sometimes blood is cooked right into the broth, though there are also occasions when the blood is served on the side, as a sort of gelatinous powder.



I´m sure you didn´t pass up cuy while here in Ecuador, Anthony, but just in case I´ll give that a plug as well. The practice of eating guinea pig might be a little repulsive to the folks in the states who think of these critters as cuddly pets, but, as a former guinea pig owner myself, let me say they are also quite tasty critters. Uncooked (and cooked), they do resemble rats, but don´t let that phase you.



Roasted on a stick and served with potatoes and a peanut sauce, they could turn even the most devoted vegetarian.





I could go on, but I think you have enough material here to fill up the forty minutes of your show. And if you are lacking, don´t forget the abundance of fresh fruits which are available on every street corner. A dollar will buy you five or six of the tastiest mangoes you will ever eat, or maybe four chirimoyas, a fruit similar to an avacado on the outside but ridiculously yummy on the inside, a sort of cross between a banana and an apple.
I hope this helps, Anthony. Here´s to good eating wherever you may find yourself next!

Welcome back!

After returning to Ecuador I started on a new installment to my blog, which sat in the ¨needs to be edited¨ folder for about a month before I read it again and deleted everything. It's probably not a great time to be writing a new blog, since I am tired, frustrated, and feeling a little emotional drain, but it's been too long since my last entry, so here it is folks.
The nearly two months since you heard from me last have been perhaps the most fruitful, frustrating, yet rewarding since coming to Ecuador. In December I spent Christmas with my entire family (sans one), held the two week old baby girl of a long-time friend, ran the trails of dear Wilderness Park with the old crew, fed my cravings for the Oven (twice), Chipotle, and green salads, and saw my cat for perhaps the last time. And when it was all over boarding the plane to Ecuador was hard, but not as tough as the first time, since I knew exactly what awaited me upon my return (about twenty Ecuadorians eager to tear my suitcases apart for the American clothes and two butt-wagging mutts).
A week into returning to my mountain life my camera fried when I plugged it into a virus ridden computer. A trip to the local mall in Quito proved fruitless, since the one store that carried the chip I needed was out, and wouldnt't get a new shipment until February (which in Ecuador could mean March or April). So, sorry, but no new pics for awhile.
I received an unpleasant surprise when I checked out my school\¨house for the elderly¨ garden and found a cow and her frisky calf frolicking all over the cabbages, carrots, beans, onions...or what should have been the cabbages, carrots, beans, onions, etc. Apparently a neighbor thought the FENCED IN land would make a great place to house her cow`. It did, but the result was that it didn´t make it a great place to grow things. After throwing up an emergency fence around the garden and talking with the neighbor, we now have a promising crop of vegetables peeking through the soil (and plenty of manure should we want compost).
After sitting on the idea for several months, some prompting by the local librarian started me baking and selling chocolate chip cookies on the weekends. So far the local kids have retained their excitment for the endeavor, joining me Fridays and Saturdays to bake. Of course, the promise of dinner and licking the bowl and spoons when we're done could have something to do with their enthusiasm. We sell the cookies in Susanna's store, and donate the proceeds to the library.
A cardboard box placed in a school room and embellished with some signs and stickers means we have a crude recycling program started in Nono. Though the kids are just collecting plastic bottles, I'm hoping with time we can expand to cans and paper, and recruit the older generations to start collecting.
Finally, this past Friday the father of my landlady passed away from prostate cancer. The cancer was present since before I arrived in Nono, and the past seven months he exhibited a slow but steady decline in health. The last month he was completely bedridden, and poor Susanna worked double duty taking care of her store and her father. Cancer is not a merciful disease, and in the last week before his death it reduced him to a being of skin and bone, resembling more of a holocaust victim than the kind and vibrant man he used to be. All day Friday the family and friends accompanied his body while it rested in the community center, and when friends left for bed the family stayed, leaving only to prepare for the mass and burial in the morning. This morning Susanna opened the store as usual, and is back to selling choclos, habbas, and her famous aji. A day elapsed between death and burial, and though I wasn't close to the man I feel slightly dazed by the rapidity of it all.
So, there you have it. The trials and triumphs of my first month back. Here's to hoping future months hold the same productivity, but with less stress.

Things I'm Thankful For

Updates

It's been more than a month, which means a new blog entry is overdue. Here's a summary of my life since I last updated.

I've adopted another dog! Or rather, he's adopted me. He followed Samina and I home about a month ago, and never left. I call him Buster, because the first thing I said to him was, "You'd better stay away from my dog, buster, or else!". I'm glad he didn't listen to me.






A few weeks ago I attended an "inter-parish encounter" in Quito, along with members of the local Nono government. All of the rural parishes in the Quito Canton advertised their best features for two days, with a show Saturday night involving dance numbers from each parish. About 30 people from Nono attended, which was about 15 more than were expected. We stayed at a camp run by a couple from Holland. Each parish had their own cabin. Unfortunately, we were not informed beforehand that blankets were not provided. In order not to freeze to death, we borrowed the costumes from the theater group and wore them as pj's.

We were the warmest bunnies there!







I have now experienced an authentic quincieniera, and it lived up to all of my expectations; food, drink, dogs, and dancing. The invitations stated the party would start at 6, then I found out that there was a Mass at 7 which came before the actually party. Of course, the Mass didn't start until 7:45. The ceremony was lovely, so much so that a local mutt decided to drop in. He checked out the priest, the alter, the birthday girl, then headed back out on his rounds. At one point I found myself humming "the Sound of Silence", which didn't make any sense until I realized the priest was singing a hymn (or something...) to the melody of "the Sound of Silence". Afterwards we walked the block to the community center, which was decked out in pink and white balloons and streamers. We danced, we ate, we danced some more, and sometime around 2am I decided to call it a night. A very good night.






On Nov. 2 Ecuadorians celebrate the "Dia de los Difuntos", or Day of the Dead. They eat colada morada (a hot thick drink made from rasberries with chunks of fruit- it's supposed to look like blood) and guaguas de pan ('bread babies'), and some visit the cemetery to pay respects to the deceased. My landlady's entire family visited for the weekend, and the house was overflowing with people. Her daughter made an enormous pot of colada morada, and we ate nothing but bread babies and drank colada for two days.

Not a Bad Day

On September 30, 2010, the police of Ecuador staged a nation-wide protest. In Quito and Guayaquil, streets were clogged with traffic, students were stranded at school, stores were ransacked and stripped clean. And in the closing hours of that Thursday the military evacuated the president from the police hospital in Quito amidst a dramatic gunfight. Meanwhile, in a little town not an hour away from the dramatic events which unfolded in Quito, this is how a certain volunteer spent (part of) her day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwryUc7fdFe

All in all, not a bad day.

Birds! Revised

For all the birders (and everyone else!)
The newer entries are all under Nono.

COTOPAXI
Andean Lapwing
Andean Teal
Andean Gull

MINDO
Quetzel
Cock-o-the-Rock
White-capped Dipper
Masked Trogan
Golden Olive Woodpecker
Cinnamon Peccard
Squirrel Cuckoo
Choco Toucan
Ornate Flycatcher
Black-cheeked Woodpecker
Wood Creeper
Spotted Wood Creeper
Palm Tanneger
Lemnon Rumped Tanneger

Nono
Rufous-collared sparrow
Southern Yellow-grosbeak
Rufous-naped brush-finch
Glossy Thrush
Tropical Kingbird
Sword-billed Hummingbird
Tropical Mockingbird?
Cinereous Conebill
Black-tailed train-bearer 9-19-2010

Changes

7 months in Ecuador. Almost a year spent in a foreign country. The first five months of my life as a Peace Corp volunteer were spent in constant transition, moving first from the (relatively) flat and english speaking state of Nebraska to the mountainous and spanish speaking country of Ecuador, then from hostals to houses and back to hostals again; saying goodbye to my warm winter fleeces only to unpack them a month later, moldy and smelling of my concrete room in the coast. Though I can´t describe my life now as normal (though in reality, there is no such thing as a normal life), the pace has slowed, and routines are developing. I can take time to celebrate and appreciate the small changes, which is something I had not quite mastered when living stateside. So, I am unofficially dedicating today, September 27,to the small things of life.

ST #1: My kitchen is finally painted! After three months of dirty white and moldy green walls, I came home after a weekend away to find my kitchen had been transformed into what appeared to be the inside of a peach. It´s quite cheering to eat breakfast in every morning, especially with the slug trails gone (albeit temporarily).




ST #2: I have a garden. Though I did enjoy pottering about in the yard and flower gardens in Nebraska, my passion never did equal that of my mother, who produces colorful and abundant gardens every spring. My landlady loaned me a strip of dirt to experiment with, and after she saw how the seeds I planted actually grew and have the promise of flowers, she ceded all of her yard to my garden whims. Now some of my favorite parts of the day are spent in the garden, weeding and watering and waging war with the slugs. It´s very therapuetic.




ST #3: My roof doesn´t leak anymore. Which is important, since I live in a region where the rainy season lasts nine months of the year, and even in the ¨dry¨ season it rains about twice a week. I do feel I should point out that during the process of replacing the roof, specifically when the old roof had been demolished and the new roof was not yet up, it poured buckets, which unfortunately found its way to my bed.

ST #4: Her name is Samina (after the famous Ecuadorian painter Guayasamin), she´s ten months old, likes to give high fives, and won´t sleep past 6 am. I originally wanted to call her Quetzal, but none of my Ecuadorian neighbors can pronounce that, so Samina it is. She´s small, but that doesn´t mean she represents a small change in my life. In fact it´s quite the opposite.