A food kind of day

Today was basically ruled by food. Not that I'm complaining...

Throughout this semester the Barranquillian volunteers have been holding English classes for the English teachers in the city. My class, which was planned primarily by myself and co PCV Jessica but helped out tons by the other volunteers, had a huge food focus (surprise!). We indulged ourselves for the last months teaching about American culture by picking our favorite (non-oven) foods that were associated with various regions, holidays, seasons, and/or all of the above, and introducing them as well as their context to the teachers.

Today, we gave the class over to them. The instructions were for them to create presentations based around their favorite recipes and give us the background of said food. We suggested they bring in food for us to taste, just for fun...and boy did they deliver.

Things I learned in class today:

• Yucca is also  known as Mandieca and also Cassava. It came to South America via the slave trade.
• Yucca has cyanide in it. If you eat it fresh, you're fine. But, say you're making bollo with it. Bollo is a sort of all-purpose food that's really just a log of boiled *enter starch of choice here*. It's sort of like a glutinous potato mass. Or, in the optimistic words of my visiting US friend, "it's like gnocchi!" Anyway, bollo logs are made to be sold on the streets and/or eaten whenever, a a cheap side dish to anything.  Which brings us back to the poison issue. As explained to us, the cyanide forms when some chemical in yucca makes contact with air. The longer this happens, the more poisonous the yucca can become. So when you make bollo, make sure you squeeze your starchy boiled yucca mass, because that will extract the poison! Nothing like finding more ways, other than salmonella (which, given the ratio of time-when-there-is-raw-meat-in-sink, to time-when-sink-is-raw-meat-free, is actually pretty miraculous no PCV has yet contracted it) to live on the edge down here.
• Mojarra, a common fish here, is actually tilapia. It comes in red and black versions and is caught in the local river
• How to make coconut rice:
• In the US, we're used to buying cans of sweet, tasty, creamy coconut milk. It's not cheap, but it's sure delicious. And easy. Here, coconut rice is a favored dish. Easy, right? Just pour coconut milk into rice and voila! Or should I say, presto! Well, no. Making coconut rice here includes making the coconut milk. Which  that includes grating entire coconuts, blending them, squeezing the coconut juice out, cooking down coconut until it caramelizes into "titote", blending the coconut with more water, to make the "second milk,"pour this into your caramelized coconut, then cook this with rice, sugar, salt, and optionally, raisins. Simmer until it's done
• There is a thing that is called "Junior Rice" that people eat here. Junior is the name of BAQ's beloved soccer team. The food is rice with ketchup. It's called Junior rice because these are Junior's colors...
• una bollita (little bollo) is a name for a beautiful woman
• although arepas de huevo -- corn cakes deep fried filled with egg -- look easy enough to make (fry a corn patty. Cut it open. Pour in an egg. Refry), they are apparently very hard to do in a way that keeps the egg inside.
• Boiled yucca eaten with cheese (or actually a variety of things eaten with cheese) is known as a "matrimonial"because the pairing is delicious but also because the cheese represents the virgin bride, the other thing represents the groom.
• In Santa Marta, a typical breakfast includes a fish soup. The fish is served whole, with the broth, which includes green bananas, scallions, onions, garlic, cilantro and avocado, ladled over it. This gives you lots of energy for the day!

Things I ate in class today:

• arepa de huevo
• yucca with bollo with suero (the whey of cheese, aka sour cream)
• boiled yucca
• "Russian Salad" - a salad with ham, chicken, peas, apples, yogurt, mayo, and lime. And iceberg. Usually eaten on white bread, we had it with crackers.
• tilapia
• coconut rice
• fish soup
• caramel-filled crackers,  of the sort given to you at mass but giant-er
• More bollo

Some of our teachers went all out for their presentations.

Serving the Santa Marta fish breakfast soup

Vueltiaos, the Colombian traditional hats, come in all sizes!

 After class and a little hammock swinging in La Paz, Tyler's barrio, I returned to the house determined to try out the "baño de Maria" method of cooking bread--as in, boiling it. Without stoves, we've gotten creative here--all credit to Jessica (check out our cooking blog to see the basic recipe and method... it involves elevating bread pans in a big pot, filling the pot with water so it comes two thirds up the pan, topping the pot and boiling until done)

I was going to make carrot bread. But that just didn't seem exciting enough. So I made it with beets and an apple. And even though I accidentally bought arepa flour, which meant the dough had not only bran and regular flour, but corn flour as well, and I'm missing a few cookie cutters, which was what I was using to elevate the pans so I balled up aluminum foil which isn't heavy enough and the pans decided to float...and I didn't use a single measuring device and combined about 4 different recipes I found online for quick vegetable breads...it actually came out super tasty.

So if you ever feel like being adventurous: Chop up two medium beets and a small green apple. Mix this with a half-2/3 cup yogurt, a half or so cup oil, 2 cups-ish of sugar, 4 eggs, baking soda, enough flour of any sort to make the batter of brownie-ish consistency. Add some salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, and if you have them cloves (I didn't, but I can imagine they'd be good), and put them in small pans. If you're lucky enough to have an oven, go to...if not, boil away!

Conversation with Colombian housemate, who, unlike the majority of people here, I tell what's in it before she tastes it, rather than tricking them:
C: "Remolacha? (beets) Oh, Emily, what were you thinking?"
E: Well, it's an experiment..it's a sweet bread
C: No, no, what were you thinking?!
E: Try it!
C: Oh! It's sweet!
E: I told you
C: It's good!
E: *big grin!*

After which, my veggie-hating host brother tried and also approved. Aka, this must be fool-proof. Did I mention, I'm also terrible at baking?

Finished bread

giant pot used to boil bread. The water discolored since one spilled a little bit...

*quality of pictures terrible because they're all from my awful phone camera, still don't have a real working one!