April 28th

Today was a stellar day, in the gastronomical sense, but other senses too, I suppose. It started out okay, I went to go teach my last English class, for which I had prepared nothing (intending to call it a “review”), only to discover the school door was locked, decided to do nothing to remedy the situation, left a note apologizing to the, oh, 3 students who might have shown up that day, and called my mom to wish her happy birthday. Then I hung out in the weavers’ office until I got up the ganas to go down to Juan’s chacra, where I was promised lettuce awaited me. When I walked past his house on the way, he was standing there with his horse Espártaco. Horses are rare here; since you can only make horses carry so much crap, donkeys are much preferred. I told him I was on my way down to his farm to get lettuce (I am allowed to go whenever I want to pick vegetables, it is beyond fantastic), when he pointed to the horse, a cute chubby gray creature, and asked if I wanted to ride him down to the farm. I couldn’t remember the last time I rode a horse, but it was definitely no later than the dude ranch swim team trip sophomore year of high school. I thought the prospect of riding a horse through town, and moreover, through the ankle-deep mud on the way down to the farm, was a pretty sweet idea, so Spartacus I rode.

People stared at me on my horse, but honestly, people are always staring at me, so who really knows if the horse had anything to do with it at all. I fear this type of insensitivity will follow me to the U.S. for some reason, like I’ll walk through a mall naked and think people are staring at me because I’m white. Señora Teo, for one, shouted at me that I looked guapa on the horse. Anyway, there weren’t stirrups, which was just sort of confusing. Luckily, Juan told to lean back when we went downhill, or else disaster might have occurred. So I got down to the farm, dismounted in a not graceful fashion (again. No stirrups), and picked vegetables. I then walked back into town, finished vegetable shopping, and ran to the weavers’ office to tell Rachel it was salad day.

If my last entry read like a book report, this one will read like a cookbook.

So Rachel and I had a rice-less lunch (which are few and far between in Santo Domingo), a salad with lettuce, spinach, radish, tomato, red pepper, cucumber, oil and vinegar, and sprinkled cheese. It was delicious.

But the real triumph was dinner. After I spent the afternoon working more or less diligently on my final report, I got up to make fajitas with squash, red pepper, and onion. I even made homemade salsa with tomato, onion, a very small amount of a very spicy Peruvian pepper called rocoto, corn, garlic, lime, and salt. I had no idea making salsa was so easy. Juan came over and ate the fruits of his (farming) and my (cooking) labor with us. I was proud of myself for entertaining. I don’t even own three plates. Rachel ate off a Tupperware lid. It was so satisfying, partially because I managed to make a delicious dinner in my kitchen (which is really just a 6-foot table with a stove, three shelves, and a dish drying rack), but also because almost all of the ingredients were bought, and potentially grown, locally (except, admittedly, the tortillas. Whatever, it could have been over rice and still been delicious).

I don’t feel like I’m cheating myself out of some level of authenticity of living in Peru by making myself semi-American meals when I feel like I’m using the same ingredients that are available to people in town. I also don’t feel bad when I share what I make with Peruvians, though this can be heartbreaking, because a lot of people just won’t try new food. When I made scrambled eggs with green pepper, tomato, onion, and cheese, Humberto’s cousin refused to eat it, despite the fact that Peruvians eat four of those five ingredients ALL THE TIME. It just looked new, and that is unappetizing to a lot of people. He tried to disguise the fact that he was refusing to eat it by taking small bites of it, and then immediately taking large bites of boiled green banana. He couldn’t fool me, though. I’ve employed that tactic too many times, often, ironically enough, to force down boiled green banana. It is definitely not going to be one of my priorities to change people’s vegetable consumption patterns; though it’s a worthwhile goal, I just don’t have the ganas. Cooking vegetable-based dishes more of a personal pleasure for me, one I didn’t know I would enjoy so much before I got here and vegetable-based dishes seemed to be in short supply. Rachel declared the fajita “like the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth,” so I think I did okay. We’ll ascertain this when we have identical fajitas for dinner tomorrow night.