Yeah, I thought I understood that I would be eating rice every day but I didn't really give it much proper thought.
But seriously I eat rice twice a day for lunch and dinner and it's not even like you can say 'I just won't have the rice today' on some days because if you do that then you go hungry. So rice it is. Rice and generic meat. I can't complain really though because it's all really nice food.
Well except for the occasional cow stomach we have to eat. Yeah, cow stomach. That was a weird moment when we realised that the strange rubbery substance cooking on the stove was cow stomach. To be honest it was a bit gross and I couldn't eat much of it but I did try. What was weird was that when I mentioned it to my mum and dad they said 'oh yeah, cow stomach. That's called tripe' as if eating cow stomach is a normal thing to do.
We've also been met with a mysterious meat that still had hair on it. That was another thing that I couldn't really eat as it makes me feel a bit sick.
There's also this jelly type thing made from the peruvian drink called chicha morada. The taste is alright but the consistency is slightly gross and it's sort of congealed. It's considered a dessert over here so we get as sort of a treat which is ironic because we don't really like it much.
Me eating the weird dessert...
Aside from those things we love the food at the aldea. The tias are all amazing cooks.
We've tried loads of new stuff too outside the aldea. Some of it sounds strange but bear with me.
We've had mushed up banana that's cooked with meat. That was so nice but it sounds really odd.
There's fried slices of banana with goats meat and unpopped popcorns. It's called Chifle and they're like banana crisps. These are my favourite new thing we've found. They're so good.
This is a packet of chifles...
I've eaten more fish in this first 2 months here both in and out of the aldea than I have in the rest of my life put together. All fresh with eyes literally staring up at me from the plate.
We came home the other day to everyone sat in the auditorium eating 'pollo a la braza' which was essentially chicken an chips. Apparently this is typical peruvian food. We said it was pretty typical in England too. I think it was friends of the aldea who brought in all the food because they brought in cake and Inka Kola too. That was a really nice surprise because we didn't know that stuff like that happened.
I've also tried the official typical dish of Peru which is called chervice. I'd heard so much about it and about how good it was so I was prepared to really love it. As it turned out it was raw seafood with lemon juice. Not my cup of tea really. I tried it and I must the omly person in Peru who doesn't like it. No one can believe it when I tell them. They can't understand why I wouldn't think it was amazing.
We've also witnessed just how fresh our food in the aldea is. Cass and I went for a stroll around the aldea one day and stumbled upon a pen full of ducks and little ducklings. We were really surprised because we had no idea the aldea had ducks. We came to the conclusion that we must be eating their eggs or something but this was a naive and optimistic thought. A few days later some of the kids took us back to see the ducks and this time we were horrified. The ground was littered with feathers and it became obvious as we approached that we entered a scene of mass slaughter. Turns out that we eat the actual ducks - not their eggs. We ate duck later on that evening and I would have felt guilty because it was running around happily that morning but it tasted so nice that I forgot about that.
The ducks and the aftermath...
Cass and I have also taken it upon ourselves to sample peruvian chocolate and biscuits. You know, to get a complete picture of peruvian culture. We thought it was necessary. We've particularly enjoyed white chocolate sublime bars. So much so that a couple of times we bought boxes of it which have 18 bars in them. We figured this would be better for us economically as we would spread them out over a couple of weeks. What actually happened is that we ate the whole box in one day. Oops. So we had to stop doing that.
Mmmm, sublime...
So there you go. To the people asking me what I eat in Peru the answer is mainly rice.
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