cakes

We went to Buenos Aires from Paris in 1955. I remember the date because we watched the riots in Bs.As. on T.V. (it was still a really new thing then). We took a house and my father was out of work for a while, so we stayed there until our next move.
Mom decided to bake a cake. It came out absolutely delicious. But she wasn't convinced of that and was quite puzzled. According to her, it should have been very high and fluffy. Instead, it was flat as a pie and chewy. Mom said "Angel food cakes aren't supposed to come out like that."
Mom had used up about a dozen yolks in this cake.
Anybody can make a mistake.

rice and beans

Tomorrow I go on a paseo. I'm always scared when I go somewhere I haven't been before, but I'm always very grateful of a chance to get out into the lovely country.
The last paseo I took here was a complete accident-on a little used road from one valley to another. My God, it's beautiful country! I'd never been there before.

So, I must prepare a take along lunch.

Greens and fruit salad, and....gallo pinto! (Actually, I had forgotten the name of this very simple rice and beans dish and had to look it up.)

Gallo Pinto is the name Ticos give it-people from Costa Rica. Of course, my mind went back to that single trip I took there. What an absolutely lovely place!!!!
I went on several paseos. To Braulio Carrilio,to Cartago, to Mal Pais , to Mistica outside volcan Arenal and a botanical garden, and to the oldest church.
The golf course my son went to in San Jose-not a private one-was incredible. It had islands of tropical growth in the green, and a lake in front!
The people were courteous and helpful...the whole place was covered in plants and flowers.We saw a coati and babies walking on the road...
I just remember it as lovely,and I relaxed and had a very very good time indeed.

These things just blow my mind.

quick cooking

I only now discovered how absolutely wonderful a pressure cooker can be!!!
As I live at 10,000ft above sea level, my carrots never really cooked. A stew took two to three hours to become edible. Last time I tried dry beans, after more that four hours of cooking they were still little rocks.A friend walked in, took them, and returned ten minutes later with nice chewy pulses, ready to be tossed in a refrito. I was hooked. I went out and bought one. (After having lived here for 30 years...)
WOW! I make excellent osso buco in 40 minutes. Chicken soup or stew, even with totally frozen chicken. Beef broth.A friend even made Matambre. My carrots finally come out cooked. And my beans are consistently lovely. All of these in under an hour. Gone is the anxiety of having to stay and watch out for something!!!
How come I waited so long? Maybe because finally three people at the same time told me about its advantages?
Yes, I've put aside total vegetarianism for a while.

shopping and stocking

I usually like Fridays.
Friday means markets and fresh produce.If I'm not in a rush, and have some cash in my purse, I go first to the impromptu stall in the volley ball court just half a block down from my house. This guy unloads his truck with fruit and vegetables from Ambato and stays until about roughly four in the afternoon. He covers the boxes and sacks with a black plastic sheet supported by poles stuck into anything handy.
I buy oranges, pineapple, melon, papaya, taxo, and maracuya (not always ALL of that) and mandarinas king for juices.
I also get small white potatoes when he has them, yuca, maduros dominica-nicer than barraganetes, I think, frejoles tiernos,habas, and if they look really nice, carrots and onions. I never buy lettuce or tomatoes there, though.

I can get all of these at the supermarket, of course, where I also like to go because they have the electric shopping cart. But in the court I get to say hello to the people who have known me for twenty years and therefore call me by my name.

Next I like to visit Pacho and Maritza's organic stall in the Floresta market. If they have them I buy alot of tomatoes-beautiful and tasty. I buy organic lettuce, herbs, leeks, avocados, broccoli, lemons,pimientos and anything else they are trying and looks good. These days I don't anymore, but I used to but yogurt, cheese and eggs also. Martiza makes excellent bread, jams and spreads, too.

The Supermaxi has vegetable and fruit sales on Wednesdays so I try to go then. They have asparagus and sprouts that I can't get elsewhere.

In Queseras del Bolivar I can get mushrooms and nuts wholesale, plus cheeses, butter and pulses grown in a community outside of Quito.

On Tuesdays I can visit Magdalena's feria, held in her garage. She has organic strawberries as well as all the other usual organic items.

It feels really good to be surrounded by the products of a garden. I feel wealthy...and having everything on hand makes it easier to eat well, balanced and of variety.

pumpkin and paint

How come I only now, at age 63, did I discover the fantastic advantages of the pressure cooker?
Because I finally ventured out to buy one, think it a useless extravagance. What a mistake!! The thing is a true blessing.
There no longer is the anguish of thinking I need to plan ahead for a simple meal. Dried beans don't really need to be soaked the night before to cook up well, frozen chicken can be put into the pot with vegetables twenty minutes before needing chicken stew or soup, beef stews finally come out with the vegetables totally cooked tasting wonderful, including rock hard carrots,and Marcela even makes brown rice !!! (I haven't tried that yet.)
I haven't discarded my old pots and pans though. Not yet.

Mario called from Riobamba, seeking a painting job. He probably ran out of money at his farm.
So, I decided to just go ahead and do it-revamp a few walls upstairs. I hired him.
Since I can't walk well, and it hurts, I left him on his own alot. THAT, yes, was a mistake.
Mario goes little whacko around paints and brushes.

I bought a pumkinish colour for the entrance, to energize the previously bleak total white (and dirty from hand and bicycle smudges) entrance. WOW. I certainly lucked out with THAT.
It looks terrific!!! The black iron handrails got a coat of terracotta to match, and the whole first impression has changed.
You now go into a warm and welcoming environment.

In the living room, Mario painted three walls with a colour I had chosen for only one, as an experiment-too see how it looked. It was horrible. Other than expressing my first impression,-THREE walls, not one?- I said nothing, but went out to buy a second colour, to tone down the lemonish with splotches from a sponge. It worked- I'm not entirely satisfied, but instead of hiring Mario for more days and mess and bother, I decided to let it go for now. At least it's neat, new and clean.
Oh well...

Then Mario went wild. I puffed achingly in the nest time and immediately saw the far wall that separates the kitchen from the rest of the area. Somebody had painted the window frame bright green some years ago-and below that Mario had used the sponge to dab a bright yellow leftover from a year ago paint. GAG. The yellows didn't match and the area looked like a nursery school.

I lost it.
He'd wasted about a whole two days (and my money) doing things I never asked for. So, I put an end to the contract, even though he did not finish. He was told to paint white over the yellow he'd put in under his own initiative (again, using my money, for his time, the paint, and transportation).

Basically it looks OK, but it's only half finished and my patience has entirely.
Oh, well...

Then he charges. Typical of all Ecuadorian workmen, they think they have done a terrific job, and tell me that they'd charge others x amount. It's useless to argue with them. They just don't understand quality and efficiency. If I do, they reply sounding cruelly exploited, and sulk.So I pay, sort of mumbling about unauthorized work and being charged the time for it and to repair damage. I swear next time I'll check up on him every ten minutes, and before that simply tell him I'll pay him y for the job. Yeah, but then I get too busy, too tired, or too something, or just forget, to follow through on that. Oh, well...


I need the place to be maintained. It's an old house, bought many years ago with a huge effort that I rent now so as to get some income. It's quite nice, but only if the things I slowly put in to make it look nice are taken care of. But people don't understand. Or care. They break things and won't replace them, like the bathroom mirror,and pots. Or they won't water the plants. And they die. This way they tear it down. It begins to look like shit. Just an old house.
I don't snoop on my tenants, and I simply can't inventorize everything.
Sigh.

Some people are nice, though. They have given me things and are clean.

Anyway, I continue to put energy and love into it. I wish my sons would, too.
I wish I still had Marthita or Jackie around to help me-they loved colors. But one has died and the other lives in Cali now. And I'd love to just have the time and money to do at all and well, at one go. But I don't.
Oh well...

The pumpkin colour looks very good, but the carpet now ought to be replaced..
Oh, well...

enchantment

I don't eat these. And only Pachamama can prepare them.

The first time I saw them in the wild was on a paseo to a small patch of primary forest hidden on a mountainside and surrounded by cultivated fields. I was awed. Never had I even dreamed of finding something like that! So delicate, so complex, so lovely.
I took one home and kept it alive, by simple accident, since I had no real idea of how to care for it, for several years.

I then found a different one, incredibly, quite hidden in a thicket, right by a roadside. I also gathered that one.

The first lilac, then yellow.

Orchids.
I now know it was quite wrong to gather them in the wild. What I get now I buy, from producers.
That way I don't interfere with nature's selection and propagation.

I try to cultivate my own in pots on my terrace, but the kind that used to grow around here. And I have four in pots in my house. I've bought books on the subject, learned some names, and I've gone to a couple of exhibitions. They never cease to be breathtaking.

cooking cuy

A friend, her husband and their houseguest dropped by to surprise me.We talked of things we remembered.
One as a time she invited me and my dog to her country house, to lunch of the very much appreciated and vaunted cuy asado. Everybody went on and on about this marvel.
I wasn't very enthused by the menu, but my dog loved running around the large lawn, and I just liked walking around. Once she planted corn and we harvested spinach and radishes. Boy, I love radishes-especially just picked up from the ground. So I said yes, thankyou.
When we finally sat down, things looked good and smelled that way, too. Valiantly I picked up the skewer and chomped into the roasted beastie. But ugh. It wasn't my initial revulsion over eating cuy that provoked my reaction. The poor lady-my friend's mother in law- just hadn't known how to grill. The thing was almost burnt on the outside, but inside it was completely raw! Definitely ugh.Nobody ate.
In Antlantida I'd watched my brother grill. In Uruguay they use wood and burn it down to grey coals. They have a moveable parrilla manipulated by a chain, so the thing being cooked, mostly meat, can be lifted away from the heat, or lowered for more.
I learned how to do it...but. It still takes an experienced master to produce a superior parrillada.

a long time ago...cake and bay leaf, plums

We were the only kids around there that had a Christmas tree. Mom had placed it out on the patio, which might seem strange, but wow, was it hot!!!
Nobody had airconditioning then, and anyway we had power shortages all the time. I did homework at night by kerosene lamp light.
We had a kiddie pool in the garden. To cool off, everybody would get in, one by one.

Mom was no cook, but one day decided to make angel food cake. It was absolutely delicious but flat as a pancake. She'd used yolks instead of whites!
I was only in third grade, but remember alot from then.
We used to smuggle our dog, Pancho, into our bedroom. But we left the two turtles in the yard. They weren't so snuggly. I now sleep with both my girls (cocker spaniels) and nobody comes around to expel them. RIP Mom, you hated dogs in the house, but your cake was GOOD.

We had a couple of masons doing something around the house, who used to cook their lunch in our yard. We had a bay tree and they'd pull off a leaf or two to put in their stew; that is, when they weren't cooking a parrillada.

Fruit tasted good then. N came to visit and bought a crate of plums. He and I ate them all and after that spent quite some time in the bathroom.

I buy the beautiful plums now hoping they taste the same. But now all fruit is tasteless, except for what is grown locally.

flowers and rocotos

M was very good at flower arranging and I learned alot from her. She used a ken san to hold a fan arrangement of godesias in a shallow silver tray. When you walked in the front door it was right ahead, sitting on a chinese trunk in front of a large window that gave out onto the comparatively small garden.Lovely.
In a corner or the living room, off to the right, there was a large cognac shaped vase. I noticed how she placed flowers with chicken wire or simply by using the stems, as with roses. So I tried my hand at imitating these. I think I did pretty well.
I never got along with her but I admired her flowers very much, and I liked her empanadas salteñas alot, too.
But I didn't really like the other Bolivian food. It was way too picante for me. They cooked with ají, decorated the dishes with ají, and served an additional fresh raw ají sauce to top things with!!!! I could never eat more than a couple of mouthfuls.Then my tongue numbed, my eyes watered uncontrolably, I gagged, coughed, and gave up trying to be polite.I never liked the chuño or tunta that accompanied sajta or saice either.

There was a half circle of petunias around the patio- beautiful things that would bloom pink lace all together. There was a bamboo wall hiding some ugliness on the far side with ferns in pots below them. She'd use those fronds in her flower arrangements.
Poking around, I found some quirquiña on the other side. Funny, I didn't know what it was, but I guessed right. They'd told me that once it was eliminated, it wouldn't grow back, just for spite, and that by mistake the gardener had removed it all. I found some and simply figured it was it. I never really tasted it.
It's used in the Jaipahuayca, the rocoto sauce always placed on the table to be placed on things and thereby blast away any other flavor. Choke.

palms and passionfruit

My friend and I went to an open air cebiche place last Sunday. It's a modest place but with a spectacular view. Absolutely spectacular. For miles.
Even though it's high in the Andes, we looked upon tall palm trees-beyond them was the far off valley and beyond, the mountains before the jungle.
I told her their name, and that they produced tiny coconuts.This highland palm itself has fronds like coastal coconut palms, lovely, delicate, refreshing to look at. It's the Quito palm.

I love the coast even though I live in the sierra.
And I remember all the coconut palms. I used to watch them change color as the sun set and I waited for the green flash when I lived in Bahia for a while.

Before that, in Esmeraldas, with J, her kids and mine,we pitched our tents under some tall ones and hoped nothing fell on us at night when we were sleeping. We didn't do more of that than what was necessary- usually at night the kids chased crabs with flashlights and we played canasta.The entire day was spent outside. We ate cebiches and inexpensive fried fish with menestra.

There is so much I love about the tropics. OK, the trees,but more. There's so very much.
Fresh fruit, for instance. Affordable fresh fruit. Coconuts, coconut milk, on the coast....
bananas, mangoes, ovos, grosellas, papaya, pineapple, watermelon ...

In the mountains we have a passionfruit called Taxo here. Then there is the sweet Granadilla whose juice is given to babies; sieved, not blended.
There is the beautiful slightly acid but very fragrant maracuyá I've only seen growing in warmer lower lands, and that I personally picked for lunch juice on J's cattle farm.
I was surprised by the huge and absolutely delicious Badea, though, that I first saw growing in Cantalapiedra, when I went with J and A.
They are all vines, and have gorgeous flowers. Their name indicates Our Lord's passion, because one of their flowers reminds one of His wounds.

etc.,

In Z's house she served potato gnocchi -invariably- with burnt butter sauce, plus an excellent grated parmesano cheese. I just can't imitate that. Another lovely inimitable dish was rissotto a la milanese.I've not had either since as good, anywhere.

Mostly we ate low-fat, though, but not because we were following a special diet. It was just that in that house they had brought the old world customs with them, and it was natural.

Minestrone was often at the table. With the second course there was always a lettuce salad, dressed at the table with precise spoonfuls of good olive oil and vinegar. The lettuce often came from laP and was ripped by hand-often in pieces large enough to go splat on your face when they sprung from the fork. Osso buco was a favorite.OK, that's greasy. Delicious, but greasy.Mostly things just weren't, though.

There was never dessert, only for company. Instead, there was always a big platter of fruit. And always a half copa of red wine. Nobody ever asked for more. We drank water, tisanes and freshly ground coffee. I never even saw a bottle of a soft drink there.

On the unhealthy side, N nonstopped smoking throughout the meals!!! In those days, EVERYBODY smoked, me too, but not while eating. It was gross. But it was his house and he was boss.
The poor man finally paid a price for that.

wheat

Alas, I love all the bad stuff-everything oily and greasy, like cream,butter,bacon, chicharones, crisp chicken skin, and everything starchy and fattening, like, most of all---pasta!!!! and bread.
I mean spaghetti, macaroni,lasagna, and most especially, ravioli.
Pasta is made from wheat.But not all dried pasta is the same...it depends, in part, on the kind of wheat.
Rice, maize (corn), and wheat are the world's leading cereals. Wheat is basically a grass.
So, next time I have some cake or toast, I'll be doing what rabbits do. Eating grass.

lemons

Lemons are wonderful. Tasty, healthful, versatile....
They can flavor just about everything from rice pudding to meatballs !!! Lemonade is one of the finest refreshing drinks. The Moroccans pickle them, people suck on them, use them to whiten hands and linen, reduce fishy odors, to avoid discoloring food like chopped apples and avocados, to make key lime and lemon meringue pie, cebiches...and the lemon plant with its flowers is just lovely.
Peter Paul and Mary, that folk group from the 70's, sang "Lemon tree, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet..but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat..." That song was beautiful, but those last words are simply wrong.
My friend P had a Meyer lemon tree in her yard. F like lemon juice on everything, as does his daughter, K. I like-need-to have them around. If I don't, I feel panicky.

roses and tomato paste

N taught me how to prune rose bushes in his musty and dust laden garden. it never rained there.

I'm really sad-he's been dead now many years- he never realized I was what he wanted.
He said it was a pity nobody would carry on his passions, especially with La P, but there was me, whom he never really saw , because-I guess- I was a girl, and the daughter of the black sheep. When I got married, he donated ALL the roses he had , but in La P, for an enormous pot at the reception.

Funny. I remember him carving up lobsters that actually moved !!! after being cut up, in Washington. Then in Ottawa he made frog's legs (ug) and a dynamite pea thing. In Lima he made pickled small oranges, and probably taught Z how to cook things. And people learned well. The food was GOOD.
I was the one who picked up on gardening, cooking, photography and painting. But I was never offered a hand into his world while he was still alive.

In La P he had a vegetable garden and he planted tomatoes which, wow, produced tomatoes, tomatoes, and even more tomatoes!!! Big lesson there. What to do with surplus? Z began giving some away and trading them with the grocer for other produce, but there were only two in their family, so that still left alot over.
Then Z began making really good tomato paste. I've never managed to get it quite right, though, and now I can't ask her about it.

cardamom

GW grew cardamom, a sort of cousin to ginger-which is well known in Chinese cuisine, ginger ale and gingersnaps, for instance. I love having some roots around for various other uses, though.

I remember seeing it growing, many years ago while I could still walk. It was in M's plantation on the road to Esmeraldas. But at that time I didn't know much about it at all.
Also, I didn't pay much attention to it because the plantation was incredibly beautiful, but dedicated to something quite different: African palm.

Those palms were quite old, and therefore tall, and because of that their fronds did not obscure vision.Underneath them grew a jungle of ferns in the shade created. There were birds all over the place,which my friend E. told me came from a neighboring protected primary forest patch.

E. told me that next to the banana plantation there were no birds.

spinach

Today I decided I'd look into something simple again...I chose spinach.
Ooops, did I goof!!!

Again I find a simple vegetable to be something so big it'll take at least two days to wade through the available information.

One surprising thing I found out was what they call "espinaca" around here (and I know as New Zealand spinach) is not related to regular spinach at all!!! Captain Cook used it to combat scurvy on his ship, though.
One good thing about it is snails and slugs don't like it. That's a positive point.
I remember finding a slug on a reguk]lar spinach bunch when I was poking around the kitchen as a child. As much as I like it, even today I am leary of eating some I have not personally washed.
I don't like New Zealand spinach much. One interesting thing about it is that it's an HEIRLOOM PLANT. I must look that up, too.

zanahorias

I'm going to switch languages.

Well, I was going to write about the simple carrot, but, when I started gathering information it became a much larger project than I had anticipated. I need to read through some rather long articles.It seems like an uncomplicated vegetable has a complex history!

I guess with GW I got into plants more than I had before. (I'll use initials when I write.) I used to go to his plantation in the tropics here, and then read books on botany and economic applications of plant uses. I really loved that plantation...the tropical plants were fantastic. The trouble is it's overwhelming, though.The tropics. Things GROW.

The area around the house was cleaned, so it was like a garden.Beyond that was the tangled jungle of his cardamom cultivation, a forbidding wall of green.
There were three clusters of really incredible plants there. Not even in the Amazon have I seen things of that size. They were shell, flame and torch ginger--ornamental "cousins" to cardamom.

Just below the house was a river, and beyond that, a hill he had left with primary jungle.The birds from there in the morning made a racket.Enough to wake me up.

On the path to the river he had planted toquilla, and around a processing area further up, small coconuts.He had planted kudzu in the fields.

I learned to distinguish them and their names.