Leon and New Recipes

January 2, 2012

Happy New Year everyone!  Leon is a really cool city and I'm glad I spent two days and nights there just before New Years.  It's full of hostels and hotels on pretty much every single block, there's tons of food choices at all price levels, and there's lots of cool places to shop.  It is a touristy city, but for good reason.  The churches are really pretty too and also extremely frequent.  I've read that the Catholic Cathedral in the main square is the largest Cathedral in all of Central America, and it's really pretty inside.  Check out sarahinnica.shutterfly.com to see the pics I took.  I stayed in a hostel with some other volunteers called La Tortuga Booluda, or “the lazy turtle”, and found out the owner was a PC volunteer in Nicaragua back in 2001.  He met his wife, a Nicaraguan woman, during his service and they ended up buying the huge house that they eventually turned into the hostel.  He's from California and has actually lived in Santa Barbara!  Small world.  He also worked with sea turtles during his service, and I wished I could have picked his brain a little bit more about the groups that work with turtles here in Nica, but at the time he didn't seem interested in a long conversation about it so I left him alone.  He stays busy keeping a full hostel running.  

For the one full day I had in Leon I decided to wander around and see the sights.  It's full of museums and churches to see, but lots of the museums were closed due to the holidays.  One I did go to was the Museum of Myths and Legends.  They have three rooms with mannequins depicting legends of Nicaragua and some from Leon specifically.  Honestly, they totally freaked me out.  I was the only one there (the museum is really small) so I felt super vulnerable being alone with those creepy faces.  I paid 30 cords to get in, and the people in the ticket booth didn't tell me anything special, so I wandered around on my own to see what the museum had in store.  When I was in one of the rooms a guide walks in and asks me “Español o Inglès?” to which I replied “los dos”, or both.  So he continued speaking in Spanish.  He told me he would be my guide and explain the myths and legends, and that the people in the ticket booth must have forgotten to tell me that usually the tour starts back at the beginning, but since I was already in that particular room that we would just start there.  Hmm, I thought, I'm the only one here and they regretted to tell me to wait for a guide?  So I listened to him kind of awkwardly, since I was by myself, talk about the legends in that room.  When he was done he told me there were two more rooms on the other side and that I could check them out at my leisure, then he left.  So he apparently wasn't my guide for the whole thing!  Lame.  They should charge less than 30 cords for that place (which is only $1.31, but still!).   

La Carreta Nagua

For dinner both nights a group of us went out to eat shawarmas.  Yes!  Shawarmas in Nicaragua!  They were chicken with lettuce, tomato, fries and an amazingly delicious white garlic sauce all wrapped in a pita for only 50 cords.  That's why we went both nights.  For lunch earlier that day I found this french bakery place that has all kinds of pastries but also yummy sandwiches, including goat cheese with herbs and mozzarella veggie sandwiches on whole wheat french bread.  That was a nice treat!  The hostel has a kitchen so people staying there can buy food from any of the local grocery stores and cook their own food if they want.  One night some volunteers made hamburgers.  I didn't have any because I was full of chicken shawarma :)  Overall it was a short stay in Leon since I am trying not to spend too much extra money, but I was glad I went and saw the city for the first time.

 

Some house news, the cement floor in the kitchen is finished!  The two windows are next to get installed, then the work installing the toilet and door to the bathroom.  The future of my stay in the house has changed a bit.  Apparently the owners do want to move into it next year, and they have plans to add on an addition to the back of the house, kind of like a mother-in-law quarters, for their son and his future wife to move into (he's only 17 now and is still single, but they're planning ahead).  So they've asked if wouldn't mind after a year moving from the main house to the addition in the back they will have built by then.  I'll still have total privacy with my own bathroom and living area.  I'm okay with that I guess, as long as the addition is safe and has enough room for my things.  It just kind of sucks having to move again once I've settled into the front house.  Hopefully there's no problems when it gets to that point.  I'm going to make sure that the contract covers all bases so I won't be left without a house in a year. 

For New Year's I came back to site and cooked a gallina rellena with Gloria.  But we didn't start it until about 9pm, and it cooked until midnight.  At that point most of the family was asleep or just didn't want to eat.  I wasn't very hungry either, so I said I'd come back the next day to eat the stuffed chicken.  I had a good time learning how to make it though.  It's a chicken stuffed with a ground pork mixture of potatoes, carrots, bell peppers, tomatoes, mustard, and other spices.  Then you sew the opening closed with thread and put it in a bag or tin foil to boil in a pot for 2-3 hours.   

 

After making the chicken, I left their house and stopped at a neighbor's house to take pictures of them shooting off fireworks and lighting sparklers.  It was pretty.  I went to bed around 1am.  The next day I slept in all morning, so I missed out on eating the chicken I helped make the night before, but I was invited over to another neighbor's house for lunch who had made her own gallina rellena.  So I got to eat some after all.  Her technique was a little different.  Instead of leaving the chicken carcass whole and stuffing the inside, she skins the whole thing, leaving the head, neck and wings, and stuffs the whole skin with the the pork mixture.  That way there's more pork inside, and the chicken meat gets made into a soup, so it's like having two main dishes.  It was delicious.  I hope to make it at home for someone sometime when I return from Peace Corps.

Gallina rellena

January 6, 2012

Last Wednesday I made my 3rd oven.  I think after this one I should stop posting about ovens because there will probably be lots more to make and it gets boring for you guys if I keep posting about them.  But here's one more pic just because: 

Yesterday I spent the entire day cooking soy products with a neighbor.  She had seen recipes for making soy milk and soy meat in my PC cookbook and asked if I could help her make some since she had 2 lbs of soy beans.   So we cooked the beans and made the meat and soy milk.  From there we made soy chorizo and soy rice patties out of the recipes in the book.  The chorizo came out pretty well, doesn't taste like the real thing of course, but it had some good spices.  The rice patties started out super bland and boring, so we started experimenting and adding ingredients we thought would taste good.  She suggested sugar, to which I shook my head and said "yuck, no way, that would taste weird".  Well guess what, the sugary ones were delicious!  It was like a fried dessert patty.  Then we added onions and carrots and just kept changing it up a bit to see how they turned out.  By far the best ones had the onion and carrot.  I wish we had some zucchini here to use.  She could start up a nice little business frying up soy rice patties with yummy veggies inside.  Of course the frying part kinda cancels out all the healthy aspects of the protein rich soy product, but hey, it tastes great.  She had the idea of baking them instead to make them healthier, to which I said YES!  Go for it.  

Soy chorizo with cuajada and chaya (cooked squash-like veggie)

Soy rice patty with onion and carrot

Maybe it will turn into something, maybe not, but at least I've introduced a new form of protein to at least one family that can use it to feed to their kids for a healthier diet.  She said she wants other protein and fiber options for her baby since she only likes to eat vegetables.  Soy's a good option!  I'm so glad she asked for my help to cook with her because I learn a lot in the process too.  Cooking's fun and I'm glad to be able to introduce something new as well.  My next goal is to make the mac'n'cheese recipe from the book.  She's all for it.  I just have to go to Jinotega to find some yummy cheese.  

More later!

~Sarita~