Plate it UP!

Peru is known for its ceviche; Northern Peru is where you come for the very best ceviche. The credit goes to the limes. Northern Peru is where the best, most potent limones are grown and they give the ceviche here a really flavorful, delicious taste. I didn't like it when I first had it, but it has really grown on me since I have been here. So much so, I have been really excited to try and make it. The opportunity finally arose recently.

Every month Tony and I set up a skype date to have dinner with each other usually to celebrate our monthiversary (insert cute sighs/disgusted grunts here). This month, I made ceviche. And I thought it might be fun to include a Peruvian cooking lesson in here in addition to my wanderings and experiences.

Raw ingredients!

Here is what you will need (4 servings):
1/4kilo white fish (Tilapia is good)
1/4kilo raw shrimp (optional - add more fish if you don't use shrimp)
1/4kilo yuca (Latin American potato of sorts)
1/kilo sweet potato
1/2 onion
1/4 Cancha (recipe for Cancha is at the bottom)
1tbs diced jalapeno (we use a spicy orange pepper here called aji escabeche)
1tbs chopped fresh cilantro
5 limes (this is a guess bc the limes here are much smaller so we use more, enough to get all the fish mostly covered)
salt and pepper to taste


Step 1: Cut onions and combine with jalapeno
*Cut onions in strips (don't dice)

Step 2: Boil water; place yuca and sweet potato in the boiling water with a bit of salt
*You can throw the sweet potato in with the skin, but you need to peel the yuca and put the white fleshy part to boil

Step 3: Cut fish into small bite sized pieces; shell shrimp

Step 4: Squeeze limes over seafood

Step 5: Mix together onion mixture, seafood, and cilantro; add salt and pepper to taste
*Here we just eat it right away, but I think that is because the limes here are more acidic. What I have found online is that with American limes you need to let it sit overnight or longer (it's worth it).

 

Step 6:  Make the Cancha!

*It is a special white corn (sometimes called Chulpe) that is large and doesn't pop like movie popcorn

*Heat up a thin layer of oil in a small pan, add the corn, cover it, and shake it around on top of the burner (it will pop, just not into a fluffy white thing). Once it looks nice and brown its done.

Step 7: Plate! 

*Cut the yuca into parts and the sweet potato into slices and place them on the top of the plate, with the ceviche in the middle and the cancha on the other side.

Our sweet potatoes are purple.

Since you need to let the ceviche sit a night/day you can do the potatoes, yuca and cancha when you are ready to eat it or before like above. Personally, I like them all a little cooler because the fish is cool from being in the fridge.

Enjoy!

Paz y amor,

Daniela

We Have Cool Lives.

Yesterday Tara and I went to Chipaca and Papelillo with my host family, the Castros, to visit some of their friends.

Me, Marce, Carlos and our new friends Teresa and Mariana.

Chapica is about a 25 minute mototaxi ride away from Chulucanas in the "country". To get there you wind through dirt roads with beautiful fields and crops on both sides. Since there were 4 of us on the way (Me, Tara, Marce and Carlos) and a moto fits 3 sitting, Tara and I stood on the back of the moto. They all have a little space in the back to put goods from the market or whatever; it is like an open air trunk (you need to hold things down so they dont fly off). But it is very sturdy!

Anyway. While gazing over the top of the moto, taking the scenery, and enjoying the breeze, I turned to Tara and said, "we have really cool lives." Originally, I was bummed because last weekend I missed Artscape in Baltimore. I had been having a really fun weekend, but I was also disappointed to not be home with my friends enjoying the festivities. But riding on the back of the moto through the Peruvian countyside I realized, I have a cool life. Living in Peru is definitely hard, but it is also exciting and beautiful and new every day.

The standard campo road.

Fording a river in a moto - another good reason to be standing up.

 

 

 

Every area of the campo may not have running water or power, but they do have futbol fields!

Carting his wares to the market, no doubt.

Campo houses and their campo fencing.

A little scenery.

True life Peru: Cow crossing -Tara and I almost got knocked off the back by a huge bull.

And to finish it off, a video from the back of the moto (the wind is really loud, brace yourselves):

Mid-year retreat!

Me, Antonette, Tara and Caitlin soakin' in the sunset. 

Over the weekend my community and I went to Mancora beach for our mid-year retreat. Mid-year retreat is a time for each volunteer to step back and take a moment to reflect on how the year has been going, and what changes they want to make going forward. We thought about how we have progressed in our faith journeys, got some insight from previous volunteers, and contemplated the frustrations and joys of living in Peru.

Playing the a Fortune Teller sent by one of our Domestic AV friends :)

I didn't really get to think about retreat much before we left. I was busy with work and busy helping to plan Tara's 25th 1/2 birthday celebration, so I never really thought about what I wanted to get out of it. But whatever I would have thought of would have paled in comparison to what I did get out of it.

Firstly, it was BEAUTIFUL there. We were on a more secluded part of the beach which made finding those intimate moments with God and each other a lot easier. 

Breakfast of bread, butter, jam, fresh juice and coffee while gazing out at the ocean.

Group reflection on the beach right outside our hotel

Enjoying the sunset.

I realized a lot of things about my year and about the relationships I have made so far that inspired me to change my priorities going forward. Here were my big take aways:

1. I have never REALLY put God first. Something has always come before Him. School, work, friends, family, boyfriends, or even alone time. My first baby step will be to wake up earlier so I can journal about the daily devotional I read. It's a small thing, but I feel like starting off the day contemplating God could be a really good thing.

2. Now that I feel comfortable with the culture and language, I need to put myself out in the Chulucanas community more. The first half was about adjusting, and now that that has happened (more or less), I want to make more of an effort to meet new people, attend more Peruvian functions, and be more active outside of work and outside of my community of volunteers.

3. I shouldn't get comfortable with the relationships I have with my AV community members. I should always be trying to challenge them as they challenge me, and I shouldn't shy away from conflicts which are sometimes necessary to grow a relationship.

4. I want to create something sustainable before I leave, or at least give it my very best effort. For a while I have been having this feeling of, "leaving my mark". And for a long time I didn't know if that was my pride, or God speaking. I reflected on it a lot during retreat and talking to my community about it, and have since decided that what I am hearing is God's voice and not my own ego. A lot of what we do here is service of presence (which means the program and Chulu have more an emphasis on being with the people and growing relationships than leaving a trail of tangible projects behind), which I love, but that I have realized recently I would like to supplement with some sort of community project.

5. I value my time too much. For example, at the Centro Pastoral I am often asked to color (make bulletin board stuff or make nametags). And while it is work that someone would do if I wasn't there, I have often felt like, "HELLO, I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Marketing degree, give me real work!". But then I realized...I came here to fulfill the community's needs, not my own. And that means doing the work they decide they need done. I also need to be more open about going to meetings and working at night or on the weekends. My Peruvian counterparts do it, but I have complained many times that I dont want to have to give up MY saturday morning. Which I need to get over.

One of my favorite parts of the weekend was picking a prayer partner and writing a prayer for them. I had Caitlin and Tara had me. I wrote Caitlin a prayer about what she has meant to me this year and Tara wrote me a "Letter from God" since I had told her I was having problems feeling connected to God sometimes. We also wrote each other affirmations; just nice little notes to tell each other how we feel. They were all very nice too.

On the beach after reading each other our prayers and recieving each other's affirmations.

In addition to the great reflection time, we also got to eat like Queens! Mancora is full of delicious ethnic restaurants. I really do love Peruvian food, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing...or too much of the same thing anyway...

Please note the HUGE (1.6kilo) fish that Tara and I are about to devour.

And we ate it ALL!

Worth the 3 hour drive just for some Thai Panang Curry!

Astounded everyone with my amazing flats eating ability #TonyBonadio

And for your general viewing pleasure:

Augustinian Volunteers!!!

 

Caitlin running into the sunset. Very Baywatch.

Paz y Amor, Dani.

Community Prayer Nights

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. 

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. 

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.   

Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. 

Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. 

Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. 

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. 

Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. 

Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. 

It was never between you and them anyway.

- Mother Teresa 

Every week on Sunday one of us plans a prayer (the above prayer was Caitlin's prayer tonight). It can be anything. We have done the classic scripture reading to drawing to singing to looking at the stars. I love our community prayer. It continues to be one of my favorite moments every week. We are always tired and always have a ton of stuff to get done for Monday, but every week we put that life stuff aside for 20mins up to 2hrs sometimes to be with each other and with God. 

I have never been in a place in my faith life, or in a peer environment, where faith and God were acceptable conversation topics. I believe, for me at least, that to really own my faith, it needs to be contemplated and tested. And I think I have done a good job of doing those things so far - going to Thailand helped me see Christianity through a different lens and opened my eyes to Buddhism, having Muslim grandparents ensured I took an interest in Islam, and despite going to Catholic schools all my life, I have had a lot of friends that are either agnostic or atheists and enjoy discussing their beliefs. So I am good on that, for now anyway. What I have never had is a group of people who I can discuss faith with coming from a similar perspective on spirituality and God. I have learned so much about my relationship with God from my community members. I am really amazed by how much I have grown in my faith (as can be seen by this post which I NEVER would have done 6 months ago) through their insights and comments during prayer each Sunday. I am definitely still in the testing and contemplating phase, but for the first time I feel like it is actually taking me somewhere instead of running me in circles. Which is a really good feeling.