Food, Food, Food

As many of you are aware, Matt and I love to eat. It’s one of our favorite pastimes. And cooking, it turns out, goes hand in hand with eating, as does gardening. We’ve had a month full of activities and, not surprisingly, many of them have involved food and plants. I thought that a quick narrative of these recent activities would give you a glimpse at some of the culinary and agricultural skills that we’ve acquired and shed some light on some of the other things that we do!

Peace Corps volunteers rarely work regular hours and rarely focus on one kind of activity. So, even though Matt and I are primarily health volunteers, we also do all kinds of other things in our community. In my case, this involves one-on-one English classes. One of my students, the daughter of a former colleague, has been very adept at learning English, a result of the fact that she is part German and part Nicaraguan and has grown up speaking the languages of both her parents. The fluency in both German and Spanish has given her an enormous advantage in learning English. Because she is so advanced, I’ve taken the opportunity to involve her in as many non-traditional learning opportunities as possible to expose her to more conversational skills. As part of a recent class I decided to share a favorite food with her – bagels. Matt and I shared our recipe, walked her through the process and chatted the whole time. The family loved the bagels and I think that we used some new vocab!

Matt and Sophie cooking bagels:

And they were delicious!

In addition to cooking, Matt and I have been slowly but surely been expanding our little patio garden. Many frequent readers will remember that we started a few months ago with a tire garden. Well, it turns out that Astro learned how to use the tire garden as a stepping stool, allowing him to jump through a hole in the fence, escape through construction next door and party with friend in the street while we were out of town. As one can imagine, these are not the most appropriate conditions in which to grow anything. So, after many reconstruction efforts and elevation of the tire, the garden has been reincarnated, and we have made the addition of two more tires. We’ve also built a small garden for mesculin greens out of old wood and an old sack. We’ve found that things grow best when elevated because at ground level they are susceptible to attack from zampopos or leaf-cutter ants that destroy anything in their path. After adjustments for the Astro factor and the plagues of ants, our plants (pepper, basil, parsely, cucumber, dill, lettuce) have been doing well, but only time will tell if we get another plaga of some sort.

Matt working on the elevated garden for the mescalin greens:

Working on the tire garden:

Some of our pepper plants growing in old yogurt containers, styrofoam cups, plastic bottles...


Lettuce! Lemon-Piccata eggplant with creamy rice and greens from our patio - ricco! (delicious!)
Many of you will also remember from previous posts that Matt and I lived with a Nicaraguan family for about 6 weeks when we first arrived in Somoto, and that we visit them every Thursday to eat, watch a movie, spend time with the girls and catch up. This week, we decided to show Ena Sofia and Adrianna (our two host sisters) how to make pizza. Matt made enough dough in advance to have pizza for the four family members and the two of us. He also made the sauce from scratch (its delicious!) and we used quesillo, a local cheese which melts and tastes very much like mozzarella, and a bologna-like product made from chicken. The results: deliciosa!

Adrianna rolling out pizza dough:


Sophie, with one of the finished pizzas:

Akhnatito, while he is adorable is really not of much help in the kitchen:




I also had the opportunity this week to share some of my culinary zeal with teachers from a local organization. Peace Corps has recently been very interested in the idea of food security. The term conjures up a number of ideas and images, but basically the gist is to help local people rely on available technologies and resources to aid them in creating local, sustainable food systems. The costs of food globally are difficult for already impoverished families. And, many countries, including Nicaragua grow food locally, export it for profit and then turn around and buy food for consumption. The sustainable food movement suggest that this seems a bit preposterous and that it makes more sense to simply eat locally grown foods. Many of you know that I am personally in agreement with this and a huge advocate (bordering on fanatic) of local food systems. So I was thrilled when I approached a local school founded by the Fabretto Children’s foundation (a catholic organization with its origins in Padre Fabretto, an Italian priest who spent many years working in Nicaragua) about a small school/family garden project. It turned out that they were already thinking about expanding their existing garden and invited me to help with a workshop about nutrition and huertos escolares (school gardens).

A teacher explaining what she learned about una dieta completa (a complete diet


The workshop was a huge success. I taught teachers about basic nutrition – carbohydrates, fats, proteins, water, vitamins, and minerals – shared some creative activities in which to involve students and then we practiced. We cooked! I showed them very simple ways to incorporate local vegetables and green leaves into everyday dishes, and they loved it. The second day of the workshop, the teacher responsible for the gardens showed them how to prepare soil, how to plant, etc.. We’re now in the process of planning how to follow-up on the activity and possibly make the school more reliant on its own garden system, saving it money.

Some of the teachers cooking in the school kitchen:



One of the recipes that the teachers made - chili (made with bought beans, and tomatoes, oregano and sweet potato leaves from the garden) with corncakes that have dried soy in them:


Gallo Pinto ("Painted Rooster" - beans and rice) with carrots cooked with butter and dulce (pure sugar cane product that resembles brown sugar with more molasses):

Teachers working on preparing soil for a garden:



So, all in all, its been a month full of great food and fun activities! For those who would also like an update on Astro and Yoda, the following series of photos says it all – they get along well, they have taken over our house (the following attack sequence happns in our bed) and they are just as cute and lovable as ever.


Everything's fine...every one is cute....
Until someone makes the first move...

A little paw swat is nothing....

Until it turns into a bigger paw swat...


A rebutal....

And finally a full-on attack - take that dog!....