Food
Food is pretty important here and they are quite proud of all their national dishes. I´m forever asked about ´what food have you tried? what´s your favourite? What do you like?´ The occasional salteña with the students at work (like a Bolivian Cornish pasty but with a bit of soup inside and really really tasty…) and all the main bolivian dishes with Mama and Papa at the weekends as Mariela is somewhat of a cooking novice. (I taught her how to use the oven last Monday…) Large large portions of Pique Macho, Chiccarron and Pollo Arabe – all dishes with mounds of meat and potatoes, minimal vegetables and ever so filling and hard to finish! It is all about lunch here, and in the evenings its often bread, crackers, more bread, tea, hot chocolate, fruit....
Mama and Papa bring the majority of fruit to the house, or occasionally we all go to the fruit market in the 26 year old squeaky gears, rusty red car that Papa also uses as a taxi service when he feels like making an extra buck. Mounds of papaya, pineapple, apples, bananas and oranges where you can buy about 25 oranges for 60p – unfortunately I have missed the mango and peach season which is distressing. But all the fruit certainly makes some delicious juices.
RED CAR
The car has also been a site for ´car picnicing´- eating snacks like empanadas and the occasional whole plate of food – Milanese – in the car complete with a bottle of coke and glasses before returning them back to the stall. My only other street stall experience consisted of Anticucho con mani picante and yucca. Yucca is a Andean vegetable and anticucho, at the time was a slightly more red and tender meat which was pretty exciting to eat – 2 days later I was informed that I had eaten cows heart with a spicy peanut dressing. Interesting. Next on the list, llama meat, which apparently is very low in cholesterol!!
One of my favourite things to eat, apart from the fruit is Todjori – maize, water and milk combo which tastes a bit like rice pudding with a good texture and basically just comforting as an evening snack or breakfast here! I look forward to the occasional week where Mama makes a whole gigantic saucepan of it which lasts for days!
I´ve also developed an obsession with my 1Bs bag of Tossitos which my fave 10p snack of maize crispy things which taste a bit like popcorn and are very addictive. They sell them in the shop near school so occasionally I treat myself! (Pushing the boat I know...)
In exchange for all this Bolivian food, I have chosen to make some ´rico and agradable comida´for my family. All I can say is that the chicken and chorizo casserole with mash potato and broccoli followed by apple, pear and cinnamon crumble with vanilla ice cream went down very well, minus the broccoli. (As I said, they don´t really do vegetables here…) Similarly I got questioned on spaghetti with a yummy fresh tomato herby sauce I made one weekday… ´No hay carne?´- As in WHERE IS THE MEAT. They love their meat.
Not going to lie, I do miss salad and dairy milk does beat Bolivian chocolate anyday but on the whole it ain´t baaaaad and the cochabamba gym is the only thing preventing me from becoming an EPIC GORDITA.
