Hola de nuevo :) Hello again. I hope that wherever you are, this finds you well. Happy (belated) Easter! Felices Pascuas! I hope this finds you well, dear reader, and
that life is going swimmingly. Greetings from Paraguay, where the weather is finally cooling down some - and it actually feels like fall may be starting. We had some cold spells, and then for about a week it got hot and HUMID again, and basically it's rained on and off again this whole week. It rained so hard on Monday through the night, that the bus that passes through my community was not running. Which isn't out of the usual after a rainstorm, but I thought that our rainy season had already come to a close. That just meant I pushed back a day my morning trip into Oviedo with a fellow agriculture volunteer. I was able to go in yesterday and I made some relatively big purchases since I just got my monthly stipend for April - a ropero (an armoire - see photo on left), bedsheets, a wheelbarrow, and lots of food/things for my house! I will post pictures next time of the changes in my room and how my garden is coming along :)
For this post though, I wanted to talk about food. Namely dulce de guayaba and chipa. I experienced my first Semana Santa in site, which is holy week in the Catholic religion here - more on that later. First, let me explain the process of making dulce - which is jam making basically, but campo style.
1. First, you have to harvest your fruit! This is my neighbor/host sister Mariza shaking down some guayaba fruit - they have a little forest of guayaba trees in their backyard - essentially, my backyard too. There was tree climbing, lots of laughs, and it was raining guayabas. The season for fruiting just ended, and there was so much fruit that a lot of it is fermenting and rotting on the ground.
3. From here, you add all of your cleaned and gutted guayaba to a pot with some water to boil until very soft. This is the fogone, the wood stove at my neighbors house.
4. After the fruit is totally cooked and mushy, you let it cool for a bit and then start blending! There were two blenders involved in this endeavor, and I think we had around 6 kilos of fruit. You want the blended fruit to be as smooth as possible for best results.
5. Next, comes the actual cooking, with sugar! I think that they may have added 1:1 sugar to fruit. Which, is a bit alarming to me. I saved a blended batch of fruit to make with honey (miel de abeja), and had about the amount that you see above in the blender. I added one cup of honey, and cooked it the same way as you do with sugar. Below, this is the cooking process over a fire outside of the house. It took 3-4 hours to totally cook down, and it turns this gorgeous deep reddish color from the very pink raw fruit. You want to keep stirring, and we added marbles to the honey sweetened version to avoid getting burned by the boiling!
6. Finally, after the dulce has thickened and turned this deep color, you let it cool and then enjoy! Paraguayans mostly have their dulce de guayaba on bread with their morning cocido (a burnt mate milky hot beverage) or just as a snack on again, bread. I enjoyed my dulce de guayaba (with honey) on fresh banana bread! I ate it so darn fast, and I want to make more!
It was a long process, but it was totally worth it. The only thing is that sugar is cheap, and honey is not. Paraguayans in the campo are not about to buy honey (it's around $8 per kilo for honey, and a dollar for a kilo of sugar?) So, unless someone has a hive with plenty of honey that they aren't selling, they aren't about to make dulce with honey instead of sugar. They doubted that it would turn out as rico (delicious) but I had some of my neighbors try it and they thought it tasted the same! Success :) There are endless benefits of removing excess sugar from one's diet, and replacing it with a local resource that is full of immunity boosting properties and totally natural. The amount of sugar added to beverages (like juice! fruit is already sweet, but soo much sugar is added every time) and things like dulce de guayaba is staggering, and it's not a surprise that diabetes is a major problem in people's health in my community and all over Paraguay. People are not necessarily overweight, but they are consuming way more sugar than is recommended, that's for sure. I hopefully will be working on nutrition charlas (lessons) in the primary school, and being part of the education process for nutrition and healthy eating.
Alright, next up in my foodie blog tonight - CHIPA! There is no shortage of chipa in the campo during Semana Santa. Literally every family is making it. Here is Na Digna preparing the masa (the dough) for chipa - which consists of mandioca flour, corn flour, eggs, pig fat, old campo cheese (it has to be old, it has more flavor), salt, and I think that's it. Totally gluten free, but not fat free that's for sure! They make SO MUCH dough it's absurd, to make hundreds of little chipas.
Here is the chipa making process, you roll out the dough with your hands, and then pull off a chunk and roll it into the desired shape. Some families have their favorite shape, and I just tried making them all! Even a heart :)
Next, you put your chipa on top of banana leaves (if you can see above, they are on top of cut pieces) and then put them in the blazing hot brick oven that every household has. Some do it one by one, and others on baking sheets of sorts as to save time. Here is me taking out hot chipa from my neighbors oven, and some of the finished product! Delicious hot, not as good when it's days old and rock hard. Although, I have reheated my chipa in the oven, and it still does taste pretty good.
Chipa is the most important Semana Santa tradition, and I basically went from house to house on my bike, visiting families, making chipa, drinking terere, and getting gifted more chipa then I could ever consume in my lifetime, seriously. Thankfully a family I know took a big bag of it - I think I had more than 30 - because they didn't have any left on Saturday after making it on Wednesday that same week. I still have some in my fridge- and just tonight, my neighbor took 3 home with him! Oh, Paraguay.
The cultural differences between the Easter holiday celebrated in the US (and in my family) and here are many. This whole week was Semana Santa, or holy week, and almost everyone is off of work or school, and stays home to make hot chipa and spend time with family. There are many different church activities, and for the teenagers who are going to make their confirmation (I think) they have 3 days of “Pasqua Joven” at the church in the town next to me.
So it's been a busy and fun past couple weeks in site, but also Easter made me SUPER homesick. I miss the US and my many different homes, and I especially miss the people I love that are living out their lives and just doing their thang. The hardest part of being here is just not being able to SEE my family and friends from back home (and actually, even new volunteer friends) when I want to. I’ve gotten somewhat used to that living in California, but now I think this is officially the longest I’ve gone without seeing family in my life – it’s been a few days over 6 months now since I’ve moved abroad! However, I was able to “see” a bunch of my family for Easter over skype – which was amazing J I showed them all my house, my yard, my garden, and they met my neighbors – my new family that I live next to. It was wonderful. Glenn, my brother, played guitar and tried to create a song in Spanish for my neighbors to understand! It was hilarious. We even did joint virtual egg fights! More on easter soon, my internet won't let me put up any more pictures right now. Here is a picture below of me with one of my community contacts, Lucia. We went on a mini adventure in the chacra of one of her uncles in La Pastora, around 25k from my community. Wearing flowers that my mom sent me for Easter!
The sky was beautiful, and I will leave you with this photo from our walk. Lots of love and hugs! More soon :) XOXO
