Thanksgiving in Peru, Panetón, and Biking around Lima

26 November 2017

Thanksgiving in Peru

This was our first Thanksgiving far from home. Peruvians in our area office made it a point to celebrate Thanksgiving with us so we would not feel bad about being away from family. Instead of calling it "Dia de Gracias" (day of thanks), they made us laugh by instead calling the holiday "Dia de Grazas" (day of fats, which sounds almost the same but may be a more correct description).

The day started out in our Area Office with a food celebration, including the apple strudel baked by Nadia Trejo (wife of Michael Trejo who we works with).

Thanksgiving in the Office - Apple Strudel, chips, cookies, Coke, and all our friends
(L to R: Sandy, Sister Lily Davalos, Alex Principe, Moroni Torres, Miguel Hurtado, Oscar Sanchez, Michael Trejo, and Marshall)

Apple Strudel - a great way to start Thanksgiving Day. 

Next stop on our food journey was a lunch trip to "El Llanero" restaurant ("The Lone Ranger") for some Venezuelan-Peruvian food. 

Thanksgiving lunch at the Venezuelan-Peruvian restaurant - Lomo Saltado (beef stirfry) and Chicken Milanese, not your typical turkey and stuffing diner, but very tasty.

Big Thanksgiving Dinner

That night, after work, we were invited to the home of President and Sister Amato, mission president of the Lima East Mission. They arrived a few months ago in Peru from Brazil (by way of Orlando, FL, where they had lived for 5 years). They invited more than 20 senior missionaries into their home for Thanksgiving dinner so we would all feel a little less homesick. We all brought side dishes and they cooked the turkeys and potatoes.

Sister Amato with the two turkeys she cooked for us - just like being back home.

Even the hors d'oeurves spoke to us of being back home.

Thanksgiving hors d'oeurves

What a crowd in the Amato's home for Thanksgiving dinner!

In all, for being halfway around the world, it was a good day for us.

Thanksgiving in Peru - We are most grateful we have this chance to serve.

3 Weeks of Travel - Humanitarian Projects

We continue to be super busy with more than 40 active humanitarian projects all around Peru. We travel all over Peru during the next 3 weeks for projects that include:

• Conducting "Helping Babies Breath" / "Helping Mothers Survive" training courses for 100 doctors in the cities of Huacho and Cajamarca
• Providing eye exams and glasses for about 1,000 children in the jungle city of Pucallpa
• Completing the donation of school desks, water pump and tank, and clothing in an impoverished region near Nauta on the Amazon River

These next few weeks of travel will be very intense. It sometimes feels like Lima is just a layover point for us. We were glad we finished up all our project preparations this past week so we could focus on these back-to-back trips all around Peru.

Panetón - Holiday Celebration Food

In Peru, people celebrate the holidays and Christmas by eating Panetón. This is an Italian sweet bread that includes pieces of fruit. It is large - about the size of soccer ball.

Panetón is different than the typical solid fruit cake we have in North America. Although it includes dried fruit, the bread itself is light, spongy, and moist. It takes up to 3 days to make panetón because of the yeasts that are used in this traditional recipe and the multiple times that they let the bread rise.

Inside a loaf of panetón - spongy and light and filled with dried fruit. Our manager brought this loaf (about the size of a soccer ball) to share with us at the office.

Shelves in the grocery stores are stocked with more than a dozen varieties of this Christmas favorite treat. Peruvians start consuming Panetón about 2 months before Christmas.

Every store selling groceries sells many varieties of Panetón - the most popular holiday tradition in Peru.

Many panetónes come in cardboard boxes for safekeeping. This 900 gram (2 pound) loaf is typical.

Panetón also comes in small boxes - this one has chocolate chips instead of fruit.

Panetón is another yummy surprise we had never tried until coming to Peru. 

Biking around Lima

On our preparation day (Saturday), we love to travel cross town to the district of Miraflores and rent bikes. Now that the winter is finally over here in the Southern Hemisphere, we are enjoying sunshine while we bike our 9-mile loop through the city and along the coast.

Biking along the coast in the sunshine on our one day off that we get each week. 

We often stop along the way whenever we see something interesting. We stopped on this journey when I saw a tiny little Quechua Indian woman from high in the Andes selling her wares in the city park.

We stopped on our bike ride to buy some goods offered by this tiny little Quechua Indian woman. She only spoke a few words of Spanish - almost everything she spoke was in Quechua in a high-pitched, squeaky voice that sounded like she used helium to make her voice that high.

It is rare to find mountain people from the Andes who dress in traditional garb in the big city of Lima. These people are a few hundred miles from home, but they seem to come from worlds apart from the hustle-bustle fast-paced life of modern Lima.

I bought some "Kiwicha Balls" from the Indian woman. Kiwicha is a grain grown high in the Andes, similar to quinoa, which they pop and then mix with honey to form edible balls. The Kiwicha Balls were tasty but super hard - I felt like I was going to break a tooth eating one. I paid about $1 for a bag of five edible balls.

Kiwicha Balls - made from puffed kiwicha (similar to quinoa) and cemented together with honey.

Anyway, this tiny little Indian woman provided the cultural highlight of our day in the sun on our bikes.

Mazamorra Morada

Peruvians in our office are always telling us about tasty Peruvian treats we should be on the look-out to try.  One of these is called "mazamorra morada", a sweet purple corn pudding they sell at sidewalk stands around town.

The Mazamorra Morada stand where they sell the Purple Corn Pudding

We found a Mazamorra Morada stand today and ordered a bowl along with some rice pudding. Eating the Mazamorra Morada and the rice pudding reminded us of eating blueberry pie and vanilla ice cream.

A bowl of mazamorra morado - ready to take home and eat

The basic ingredient is purple corn, which is boiled with water, cinnamon, cloves, pineapple rind and chopped fruit, such as quince, plums and apples. Once the corn and other ingredients have passed their flavor to the water, they typically thinken with corn starch or sweet potato flour to give it the consistency of a really thick pudding. Then they sprinkle cinnamon and ground coconut on top. It is often served with rice pudding on the side.

Mazamorra Morada - it tasted like blueberry pie and vanilla ice cream.

A bowl of the mazamorra morada with a side of rice pudding sells for less than a dollar. It was a fun little treat.


So now the adventure of 3 weeks of non-stop travel begins for us as we journey to the northern coast, into the Andes Mountains, and into the jungle to finish up several of our big projects.