Food

Contrary to what you might think, we are eating here. In fact, it feals like we never stop eating (after a big breakfast, a huge lunch, and then a almost equaly large big dinner) . The food here (meaning in a middle class family in the south part of quito, ecuador, in case you haven´t read the rest of this blog, is good, though very bland (I happen to like spicy things, and they do not apear to have so much as a pepper shaker). It is also all cooked on the stove, since our host family doesn´t use their oven for anything but storage), and is often deap fryed (in fact, the closest you could probably get to ecuadorian food in the united states would be to walk into a mcdonalds, order french fries, and imagen somthing about 100 times better).

So far, neither Hanne or I have encountered anything we couldn´t stand to eat, though they insist on serving us larger portions then we can finish (we are still working on what to do with it without being rude).

The staples here are as follows: eggs (for breakfast at least, and probably apearing at some other time, too), potatos (fried, baked, in soups, ect.), rice (specificly a short grain rice, which is, again, eaten constantly). Manderin oranges, plus whatever other fruit happens to be arouond, are the main snacks. Lunch, most places, is the bigest meal of the day (though with are family, it apears to be equal in size to dinner, which is comprised of leftover´s from lunch).
Befor leaving the US, several thousand people warned us not to eat the raw vegetables. However, our family has some extreamly nasty miracle chemical that they use to make it eatable, and, so far, neither of us has gotten sick.

While Hanne and I have tried very hard to help in the kitchen and, thus, learn the papa-y art of ecuadorian cooking, we have been very unsusessful. However, yesterday, we got to help with dinner, which happened to one of my favorate things we have eaten (probably because it was the first spicy thing, too [note the raw onions]). It was called Cerviche de some found-only-in-ecuador-grain-I-can´t-remeber-how-to-spell-or-pronounce (aka Cerviche de something-that-is,-for-all-practical-purposes,-a-soybean). Here is how to make it:

(note that Cerviche is usualy made with raw fish, but our family was nice enough to make the grane version for the vegitarian gringos)
1. Cook a bunch of soy beans, or other type of bean. You want them lightly done. Sorry, I am not sure how much, but we will say: enough, so that, when cooked, it fills up a little more then half of the bowl you are using.
2. Cut up a red onion or two, depending on how much you are making and how much you like red onion. make the longest, thinist slices you can.
3. Squeeze enough lime juice to marinade the limons, add some salt (this is to taste, but you can add some later if you think it needs more) and marinade the onions for a while (5ish minutes)
4. cut up enough tomatos so that you fills most of the rest of your bowl (we used four, I think). If you happen to be in a place where you can´t eat stuff you can´t peal, then peal the tomatos.
5. Dump out the lime juice, then mix the beans, tomatos, and onions together.
6. eat.
7. say ¨Que Rico¨(literaly ¨how rich¨, but it realy means ¨how delicious¨and is more often aplied to food then the more obvious ¨que delicioso¨.
8. Don´t forget step 7. It is very important to ecuadorian meals, and is usualy said atleat 7 times per meal.

Did you like it? I hope so. I will post more about food and other stuff (like the death-trap of a fair ride I somehow ended up on, our trip to the almost-ecuador, yummy oatmeal drinks, and climbing a mountain almost as tall as mt. Raineir) latter. We even have pictures, but our host families internet is down and we are in an internet café and are going to wait until we have can put up the pictures to write about these things.

Hope every one reading this is having a lovely time on vacation or at school or work or whatever they are doing.