My
first morning in my host family’s house, I slept in ‘til about 11. I awoke to find Lupe had prepared me
scrambled eggs with juice. As I ate she told me that we would be taking a walk
to CEDEI to show me the route I would be taking every day. A street or two into the drive we happened
upon my host-mom’s son in his car, he said why not have him drive us there and
we could walk back? We decided that was a good idea and into the car we all
piled. The streets seemed to whip by on the way there in the car, I was a bit
nervous I wouldn’t be able to navigate my way back by myself when I had class.
He dropped us off at the university and we started our trek back to the house.
Lupe made it clear that the route was for the most part “Al recto” or straight
down the road. And straight the route
was, my route to school has two turns to it and otherwise is completely on the
same road the entire time. Nonetheless the walk takes about 30 minutes to make;
Lupe assured me that if I walked quickly the walk could take as little as 20
minutes, 15 if I really walked with purpose. One the way back we stopped by the ice cream
shop to get an ice cream for me and Sebastian.
I had a flavor called “Amor Bruja”, Lupe and the shop keeper assured me
that it would be tasty, which didn’t really solve what flavor it was. I think
it turned out to be a mixed flavor of fruits, swirled chocolates and vanilla
ice cream. Delicious.  |
| Park on my walk to school |
We
got home and Lupe started to prepare lunch so Sebastian and I went into the
front of the house to play basketball. He taught me a game kind of like Around
the World called Reloj. The object was to go around the entire “clock” face
making each shot as you went, for each shot you made, your opponent goes back
one spot until he is at the first place and then stays there until a shot is
missed by the opponent. After a bit we took our game over to the park a street
over to play on an actual basketball hoop, which was a disadvantage for both of
us. Lunch was good, but sadly I cannot
remember what exactly we had. It was some sort of mix of a bowl of soup, rice,
meat and a wonderful juice. After lunch I took a nap in my room through a
thunderstorm. I woke up and wandered downstairs to find out that we were going
to make empanadas for dinner. Not only that, but Lupe was going to show me how
to make them.
Do
I remember the recipe? No, not precisely.
It was the usual mix of ingredients that go into dough, yeast, flour,
sugar, yada, yada. All ingredients were put into a large bowl, whisked
together, then the liquids were added and we kneaded the dough into an actual
viable dough-y shape. Once it was to a state that Lupe found acceptable she
gave me and Sebastian a rolling pin to start thinning it out. You might be used
to rolling out dough for sugar cookies or snicker-doodles or whatever, but this
is a horse of a different color. For empanadas, the dough needs to be rolled
thin, very thin, like almost paper thin. Once you’ve reached the desired
thinness, then you take a circular object, such as a wine glass and use it to
cut out a shape for the empanada. Peel away the extra and put in back into the
dough pile. Take a bit of filling, we were using a cheese filling and a banana
filling, and put it in the center of the empanada. Now comes the tricky part. Fold the thin dough
in half, making a crescent shape. This is all I did for the first few, not
realizing I was missing a whole step. Lupe pulled one out of the boiling oil
that had popped unsealed and showed it to me with a stern look on her face, I
apologized and we both laughed.
Sebastian’s dad arrived and showed me that I still needed to seal the
empanada shut. The sealing process entails making little folds along the edge
and pinching as you go. When finished
the edge should have an almost elegant kind of braided design, one or two of
mine came out looking presentable. Whether presentable or not, they were all
darn tasty. Scrumptious even. I especially liked the banana ones, Sebastian’s
dad told me that I should take the recipe for banana empanadas back to the
states and open up a store and then I’d be rich. I think he might have an idea
there.
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