Sunday, March 16, 2008

How to prepare a pachamanca in 8 easy steps

1. Head to your local carniceria (butcher) and pick up 12 kilos of meat. Ask the butcher to cut it up for baking in an oven of rocks, mud, bricks, and grass. Meanwhile, the pachamanca host is likely harvesting potatoes, lima beans, and corn, and butchering a few guinea pigs

Butcher, and Rolando (our host) with some of his corn

2. Hop on a bus to the outskirts of the city, get dropped off a 10 minute walk from where you're really supposed to go, and trek along dirt roads until you arrive at the selected place (my friend Rolando's house)

The annex of Sanos Grande

3.Heat up the oven for the pachamanca (means: dirt oven in Quechua) with eucalyptus wood in the courtyard

Men the world over discuss at what heat to cook meat

4. Make some humitas/tamales from scratch by: shucking corn, removing all kernels by hand, manually grinding it up and making a dough with the corn flour, oil, butter, lard, sugar, cinnamon, and raisins. Wrap up the results in fresh corn husks , making sure to spill dough all over yourself and others in the process

Gabby and I were the humita queens


Even the little ones can lend a hand

5. Once the oven is piping hot, work with as many people as possible to remove the top rocks and pile up the food inside in the following order: potatoes on the hot coals; corn husks; marinated meat (including a pot of guinea pig); humitas interspersed with hot rocks; lima beans in their pod. Cover up the whole mess with cut grass, waxed paper, and finally, a plastic tarp


6. Wait for about 1 hour with your belly rumbling and your mouth watering

7. Again, with as many people as possible, remove the tarp and wax paper and (with your bare hands!) pull everything out of the oven and into its respective dishes

8. Eat! Think about how it's more food than you would eat in the course of a normal day, and enjoy every minute. It's delicious!

Friday, March 7, 2008

Agriculture around Huancayo

The potato harvests are starting now, which means that people are out en masse helping their neighbours dig up, sort, and pack their potatoes. The potato fields, which at look like this when in full growth:


are stripped and emptied from now until May:
There is an organic orchard not far from Huancayo, where they grow pears, apples, peaches, tunas, various fruits, vegetables, flowers, corn, potatoes, wheat, barley...and...raspberries! Whenever we visit we are invited to sample the freshly-picked fruit, sip teas made with their herbs, and munch on homemade bread and jam. It's great.

Most farmers also have animals, and use their waste as fertilizer. We're putting together workshops on how to process the manure into organic fertilizer,

Transporting myself around

There are various forms of transportation here, although I stick with our work pick-up trucks. The views are incredible from most of the roads,

although occasionally they are slightly frightening:

Little "moto-taxis" are also ubiquitous:


and there are lots of trains around Huancayo, although I haven't taken one yet. Here are some engineers fixing the rails:

In Lima, you can also jump off a cliff with a parachute and glide around for awhile (I haven't done this yet)

My friend Gabby is here now, and we'll be going to the jungle this afternoon - it will be great!