Spaghetti for Breakfast

Well, Since I´ve been here for two months (oficially today) I think it´s time to share with all of you some of the Ecuadorian eating habits.

I know before I left I was worried about having to eat guinea pig, a delicacy here, but the closest I have come to that is being stared at by the one on someone else´s plate. thank goodness :)

Today I woke up and got ready for church, a Sunday norm, then I went into the kitchen to see what was cooking for breafast. My host sister was making fresh strawberry-banana juice, one of my favourites so I thought ''well, it´s off to a good start'', then I walked over to the stove: one pot held spaghetti and the other boiled poataoes, I don´t know why I found this funny but I almost laughed out loud. All I could think of was how in the last two months, spaghetti for breakfast has become somewhat of a norm and before I came here if you asked me if I wanted spaghetti for breakfast I probably would have screwed up my face and said ''spaghetti is not breakfast food''. But here, breakfast food doesn´t really exist: sometimes, very rarely, my host mom makes omelettes or boiled eggs or pancakes, but most often it is soup, or potatoes, chicken with rice and salad of tomatoes and onions, one morning it was beets and mashed potatoes another home-made french fries and salad. Anyway, I think you get the point. Here, breakfast is just another meal of the day with no particular food to it like how I would generally eat cereal or toast or eggs with bacon in Canada.

Also, June, July and August are the festival months in Cayambe, so I have experienced some of the traditional festival foods in Cayambe as well. First of all, I really like most of them. I have been introduced to empañadas which are a circle of dough folded over a piece of cheese and deep-fried then sprinkled with sugar, and they are delicious! Also, they have these things that the call chochos and we thin kthey are a legume but I don´t really know what plant they come from. Anyway, they serve them with large dried corn kernels (kind of like giant unpopped popcorn) dried banana chips, onion and tomatoes and a slice of lemon, this is also really good although I was somewhat skeptical when my host sister first offered them to me.

At parties they like to drink a juice called Chicha, I don´t know fully how they make it but I know it is derived from corn, sometimes it is fermented and sometimes not. They have a whole bunch of it in a bucket and go around scooping out cups of it to offer to people. Sometimes it is fermented and sometimes not, though I do not really like it either way, I prefer it not fermented. I usually drink it the first time it is offered to me but after that turn it down politely.

All in all, I have gotten used to the foods here. I still eat too little according to the locals who eat mountains of food. My host sister and brother who are 11 and 7 generally eat more than me and one of the teachers at the schoos would bring in snacks for his students at the end of the year, him and his wife were concerned that I didn´t eat enough so he would always invite me in to eat with his students which I thought was quite funny. If I saw his wife later on she would usually ask if I had eaten and when I said yes she would be very happy.

peace,
Krista