Paches!!

So I spent the day (and I do mean the entire day) making paches which are tamales steamed in giant green leaves. If you read my last blog then you know that I bought a Guatemalan cookbook in Spanish a few days ago and decided this should be my first recipe. Here are the steps… Go to the farmers market and find all the ingredients and try to make them yourselves. Or just come visit me in Guatemala and I’ll make them for you. :)

These first 3 pictures are of the ingredients you need to make the paches. These giant green leaves are called hojas de mashan. The recipe calls for 1 ½ manojos (bundles).

It took me 2 trips to the market and a stop at each of the 4 grocery stores in Pana to get all the ingredients.

This is the plant that you use to tie the paches closed. It is called ciabaque and you have to pull them apart to make them ribbon sized.

Ok… step one. Peel, cut, and boil the potatoes until they are mashable (should be a word). On a side note please notice the view of the volcano out the window... favorite thing about our house.

Next step: Let the potatoes cool down for a 2 hours while you go to Spanish school and laugh with your teacher and the owner of the school about how you’re a gringa attempting to make paches. (I’m going to take Candalaria and Gladys paches on Monday to prove I made them semi correctly).

Next cut up the tomatoes and tomatillos and cook them with a little water and 2 chilies guake.

Here are the chili guakes. I was told to be sure to take out all the seeds before I added them to the pot or it would be unbearably spicy.

Now toast 2 onzas (ounces) de ajonjoli (sesame seeds) and 2 onzas de pepitona (squash seeds).

After you blend the tomato/tomatillo/chili guake mixture with the toasted seeds add the chicken and bring to a boil for 6 minutes.

Next melt a libra (pound) of butter. You are actually suppose to use lard, but 1. Where do you even buy lard and 2. Gross, so I used butter instead.

After you mash the potatoes (with a plastic cup because you don’t have anything else to use) add in about half of the salsa mixture and the butter. This is the longest process, but you have to do it for a long time until get all the lumps out of the potatoes.

Pick the chicken off of the bone even though you are grossed out by having to play with the rawish chicken it is ok because it will finish cooking through while the paches are being steamed. (I was told not to cook it all the way through. I thought it was odd also).

Next slice up some red peppers and throw some olives on the counter to make an assembly line of ingredients to put inside the paches.

 Ok... time to build your paches. Pick out one of the smaller leaves and put it all together. A few spoonfuls of the potato mixture with 2 strips of the red pepper, 2 olives, chicken, and some of the salsa on top.

 After you fold that leaf around the mixture flip it over and wrap it inside one of the bigger leaves.

 Next step is to use the cibaques to tie it together like a little present. I ended up tying them together from both ends even though this picture only shows it tied once.

 Pretty little paches. This recipe made 13 of them. So much work!

 Now how to cook them. You line the pot with leaves so that the paches do not touch the sides or bottom of the pot.

 Next line the paches along the edge of the pot and put some water in the middle. Then fold over the leaves sticking out of the pot and put a frying pan on top as a lid so they can steam for about 40 minutes. (I had to do 3 rounds of tamales because I didn't have a large enough pot to hold all 13).

These are what they look like after they are cooked. I opened one right when I took it out of the water and it wasn't firm like a tamale should be. I then realized that I needed to let them sit for awhile. I put them in the freezer and went to a friends house to watch a movie tonight. By the time I came home they were perfect. I don't know if they didn't set up at first because they had to have that time to firm up or if it was because I used butter instead of lard. Who knows, but it doesn't really matter because they eventually turned out right.

So here is the finished product. Not the prettiest thing you have ever seen, but Heather assured me that that is how they always look when you open them.

It needed a little salt (I had forgotten to add any salt while I was cooking them, but other than that it was delicious! This week is surgery week at the clinic and I am going to be working really long hours, so it will be helpful to bring these for lunch and/or eat them for dinner.

Also when I got home Heather had made empanadas for dinner and saved me one. I laughed at how much of a Guatemalan dinner I had tonight. Maybe Heather and I will start selling our food on the streets around Pana. :)

Hope you enjoyed the recipe. I mainly just wanted to write it all down with pictures, so I wouldn't forget how to make them. I ended up not following the recipe exactly because the ladies at the Spanish school told me to swap some of the ingredients and to make them a little differently than the cookbook said to.

Tomorrow is triage day where there are suppose to be about 400 people at the clinic trying to get inside to see the doctors with the hope of having surgery this week. I am excited to experience my first surgery week and to work with the team. We are leaving at 6:15 tomorrow morning, so I better get to bed. Night peeps.

New books and cooking adventures...

After work and Spanish school today I walked down close to the lake to go to my favorite little bookstore. I ended up spending way to much on books which isn't a change from what I do every time I go to Barnes and Noble back home. I have a little system down here for money. The wallet that I carry has 2 pockets in it. One pocket is money that I use for Spanish school, groceries, rent... pretty much necessities that I have and that money comes out of what is donated to me. The other pocket is money I have taken out of my savings that I use for personal purchases (pretty much anything that I don't feel comfortable having a donor pay for). For example the $40 I spent on unnecessary books today.

Anyways, here are the books I bought... fascinating blog I know.

I bought the Spanish for Gringos (which is not a derogatory word like I first thought when I moved here) because I am not able to go to Spanish school as often as I need to now because of working so much, so I really need to step up the studying I do on my own time.

Speaking of studying more I decided to challenge myself with reading a book in Spanish. My brother's favorite book is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and I have started it a few times, but have never finished it. The little bookstore had it in both Spanish and in English, so I decided to buy it in both. I think i am going to read it paragraph by paragraph (or maybe sentence by sentence) and translate it as I go. I also think I am going to read it out loud (at least when I am reading it at home) to help me with my pronunciation and speed at which I can pronounce Spanish words. We'll see how long I stick with it. Hopefully it will be a good learning tool and fun exciting way to read his favorite book.

Lastly, I bought a cookbook for Guatemalan food. I bought this book for 2 reasons. First off you have to cook EVERYTHING from scratch here, so I am constantly looking up recipes online and it is annoying how many of them have ingredients that you can't find here and I knew I would be able to find everything in this cookbook in Pana. And second my roommate and I have been talking about how we want to learn how to make traditional Guatemalan food. We even thought about hiring a Spanish tutor that a lot of the volunteers use to come to our house and teach us how to make tamales. I still hope we do that someday, but I also think it will be fun to learn myself.

Anyways, the cookbook is in Spanish (obviously), but it was my favorite that I looked at because every recipe has a picture to go along with it (which is extremely helpful when you don't know what anything means). I brought it home and Heather and I decided that the first recipe that we should make is Paches. We then spent about an hour translating it into English. I had to google a lot of the ingredients because I had no idea what they were. Here are some words I learned...

Cucharada - tablespoon (or actually it means spoonful).

Cucharadita - teaspoon

2 dientes de ajo asados - 2 teeth of roasted garlic

1 manojo - 1 handful

1 libra - 1 pound

Sal al gusto - Salt to taste

I am planning on going to the market on Friday morning before school and buying all the ingredients then make it on Saturday. I'll let you know how they turn out. I am a little nervous about buying everything in the market, but now that I have googled all the spices and veggies that I need to buy it should be easy.

Here's an update on work... Today I went up to the clinic to help Heather set up the operating rooms along with the rest of the clinic for Surgery week that starts on Sunday. There is a team of doctors coming in for the week to do eye surgery. Sunday is triage day which is apparently crazy. Over 400 people usually show up hoping to get surgery, but they can see about 150 patents and then maybe only do less than 100 surgeries. I am excited to experience my first surgery week starting with helping schedule surgeries on triage day. Also next week we have a dentist team coming in and staying in Pana and working across the lake. I am going to spend the day with them on Monday to experience what our rural medical teams look like. Then on Tuesday I will be back at the clinic helping out with surgery week. Maybe they will need some help in the operating rooms... I mean I did set them up today, so I'm pretty sure that makes me legally a doctor. :)

On another random note ASHLEY GETS HERE IN 10 DAYS!!! She is coming to visit me in Guatemala then we are going to Belize for a few days (another good example of spending money that would come out of my savings wallet pocket). It has been more difficult that I thought it would be planning the Belize part of the trip mainly because you have to take so many different travel precautions that you wouldn't have to even think about back in the States. For example we are not allowed to travel at night. Not on a bus or on a plane. One because there are not many street lights in Guatemala, so it's really dangerous to drive/fly at night and two because Gringos have a curfew here because being out at night when you're not in a busy populated place isn't a good idea. It's been complicated, but we finally figured almost everything out and I can't wait for her to get here! I am most looking forward to a family hug (sounds so cheesy, but it's what I miss most here), great conversations, and showing her everything I love so dearly about Guatemala. I know I am blessed that she wants to experience this with me.

I'll let you know how the shopping/cooking goes. I mean what are the chances I can mess up a very complicated recipe all in Spanish? :)

New Pictures

The girls from the mission team uploaded their pictures this afternoon on Facebook. These were my favorites that they took last week. The last blog I wrote goes along with these pictures. I just didn't have them to post when I wrote it.

The first picture is me playing at recess with Karen Lindsay. She is one of my favorite first graders. It was freezing and lightly raining this day, so we were all bundled up. The following are just some cute pictures with some very cute kids.

 

Oh the zip line. I still haven't made up my mind if I will ever do it again. However, I did get some hilarious pictures out of it.

 Shopping in San Antonio Polopo...

 Boat ride around the lake...

These are pictures of Sheryl's (the nurse at the clinic) new puppy. He is so little and adorable!!

She carries him around in this little purse... so cute! :)

Last night I went to Solomon's Porch and watched the Super Bowl. Oh my gosh was it hilarious to watch the Guatemalan's faces when Madonna was preforming the halftime show. I'm hoping they didn't judge America from her performance.

Beautiful Saturday...

So the team from New Hampshire and Maine that I talked about in my last post came to Pana for the weekend. On Friday night it poured down rain for the first time since I've been here. I've been told that Guatemala has a rainy season that starts in April and lasts until early Fall, but it is rare for it to pour this time of the year. However, I was also told that Guatemalans call February 'Loco Febrero' which means crazy February because the weather is often weird. 

Anyways, thankfully Saturday was a beautiful day to be in Pana and I spent the whole day with the team. After breakfast we went to the Nature Reserve (I had previously gone with Spanish School) and did the zip line. Let's just say I absolutely LOVED the first maybe 30 seconds of every zip line (7 in total) where you are flying through the air, kicking the tops of trees with your feet, and looking over the beautiful lake and volcanoes. However, I also have to say that I absolutely HATED WITH PASSION the last 5 seconds of every zip line where you have to stop yourself (by gripping the line with one gloved hand while the other one is holding on for dear life) unless you crash into the dude waving the stop flag. I got better the more I did it, but twice it hurt how hard I landed. Also just so you know when you crash into the rope/guy that stops you it is about 2 feet in front of a boulder that you think you are about to run into going on average (according to their signs) 45 feet per second. I obviously have a love/hate relationship with zip lines. We did take hilarious pictures of us in all of our gear (which is so comfortable), but not on my camera so when the girls upload them to facebook I'll post some on here to share... get excited.

Next up we walked around town a little and shopped in the market then we went on a boat ride to a village across the lake. I had be wanting to go out on the lake and was very excited when I heard that was our plan for the afternoon. Our boat was the one on the left side.

I sat backwards in the back of the boat and absolutely loved the view. I got to both look out over the lake at all the different villages and volcanoes and also watch the boat driver who was rocking out and singing to himself whatever he was listening to on his discman.

My back row buddies... Carrie and Maggie. Have I mentioned how glad I was that these 2 were on this team?

Other side of the back row... Archy and I were talking about how he watched a lot of TV in English when he was trying to learn it. He told me that I needed to start watching DVDs one scene at a time. First in English then in Spanish then back in English again if I couldn't understand the Spanish. We'll see if it helps.

View of Santa Catalina Palopo (village to the left on Pana) from the boat. It reminded me of a boat ride I took in Cinque Terre in Italy. The village along the lake looks about the same.

We docked at San Antonio Palopo (same village I went to a few weeks ago with Spanish School) and walked around town a little.

This village is known for their pottery and their weavings. We stopped into one little shop and saw this girl weaving a table runner. It takes so long to make one.

Archy pretending to weave.

The ladies in the store convinced Maggie to try on a traditional Mayan outfit. I told her she should buy it, but instead we all just bought scarves.

After we finished in the little shop I sat outside on the road to wait for the team and the second I sat down a lady came up to me and started putting something in my hair. I kept telling her no and that I wasn't going to buy anything, but she spent about 5 minutes tying this long blue strip into my hair. When she was done I felt so bad that I went ahead and bought it from her. I wish I had taken a picture of the back of my hair, so you could see how she weaved it.

Carrie being mad that the lady didn't attack her head with a ribbon. :)

Picture with the team after the boat ride.

We went to dinner at Restaurant Pinguinos. It is right on the main street in Pana and served yummy Guatemalan food. It was a fun restaurant to eat dinner at.

Check out the cute flowers in our carrot soup.

During the meal they would play a Guatemalan instrument (can't remember the name of it) that reminded me of the instrument that the guys used to play at Guadalajara. (Great description I know).

After dinner the girls had a few last minute gifts they wanted to buy in the market, so we walked around for awhile. I really wanted them to buy this hat (who would wear this???), but they couldn't figure out how they would get it home.

Back at the hotel we jumped on the trampoline for a few minutes (I enjoyed pretending I was still in high school with them) then sat there looking at the stars/funny looking clouds for about an hour and talking about life. I can't figure out if I really love working with teams down here and want to do that more, or if I just loved this week with this team so much because it had 3 youth on it and I just really miss the youth from the church back home. Who knows. Maybe I will figure it out during the next team. I went to breakfast at their hotel this morning and was really sad when they left. The girls kept giving me hugs and telling me they were going to miss me. Working at the church back home I am used to constant love and joy and laughter and I have been missing that these past few weeks here. It was a blessing to have them here and to feel that again.

Lastly, as always here is another complaint about bugs. Have I mentioned that I HATE bug bites?? I looked at my legs last night before falling asleep and decided they were picture worthy, so enjoy. The team this week kept asking me about my legs and I constantly catch people looking at all my bites. I really hope everyone understands that they are stupid bug bites and not some horrible disease. I also have a plea for you. I need home remedies to keep spiders away from my bed and also to make my bites stop itching. Remember that I live in a town with few things that you can find in the states (I can't even find clear nail polish to put on the bites anywhere here). If you have any advice let me know!

I am going to go watch the Super Bowl in town at either Solomon's Porch (the church I went to a couple of weekends ago) or at The Palapa (where I watched the Texans game). Happy Super Bowl day.

11 LONG days straight of work...

I am EXHAUSTED!! Last week was the first week of school which was crazy busy. Then this weekend I spent in Chichicastenago with a mission team followed by working everyday this week. Needless to say I need to go to bed early tonight and sleep in tomorrow (my day off...YAY!) and I'll be back to normal. Anyways, I've had a tiring, but beyond wonderful week in Guatemala. Here are some highlights. (Sorry I haven't blogged in a week... I don't know if you've heard or not, but I've been a little busy.)

I went to Guatemala City on Saturday to pick up a team who did some construction around Salud y Paz this week. After picking them up at the airport we traveled to Chichicastenago. On the way they asked me dozens of questions about Guatemala and I was very proud that I knew the answers to almost all of their questions. I went to Chichicastenago for the first time in August, and was really excited when I was asked to 'host' the team for the weekend. We did almost all of the same things that I had done in August which was comforting to me since I then knew my way around and how to answer questions. There were 3 teenage girls on the trip which I loved. I walked around the market in Chichi on Sunday with the girls and I laughed the whole time because they kept referring to me as their personal tour guide and translator. The idea of me being a translator is pretty hilarious. You know since I'm horrible at Spanish so far. Anyways, I have been missing the youth a lot at church and it was a blessing to have them here this week to hang out with. It made me miss home a lot, but also it got me really excited for future mission teams.

This first picture is from the cemetery in Chichicastenago. Cemeteries here are completely different than in the States. This one is beautiful to walk through. I translated this verse for the girls and was pretty proud of myself.

This little boy (Alex) and his friend were playing around the cemetery. They would go from climbing this tree and posing for pictures to climbing on top of mausoleums.

The rest of the weekend in Chichi was amazing. It felt like home to me to hang out with this team. On Sunday we went to Juan's church together which I also went to in August and loved. Juan works at Salud y Paz and is also a Methodist minister. He has actually been to Houston and has talked to the Bridgebuilders Sunday school class at the church. He is amazing and I was very happy to go to his church again. That night the team had a devotional at the hotel after dinner. Again it reminded me of home.

I took this picture a few nights ago from my house. Heather and I looked out the window and saw how beautiful the sunset was, so we both ran outside and up the path to our compost (yes we have a compost which I love) and garden. I wish this tree wasn't in the way, but you can still see how AMAZING it was. There have been several cool sunsets this week.

Here is another cooking adventure I had. I bought some bananas at the market last week that went bad really quickly, so I decided instead of just throwing them into our compost I would make some banana nut bread/muffins. My roommate made lemon poppyseed bread the next night. Maybe we should look into opening a bakery in Pana. :)

This next picture doesn't do this story justice. I've learned that every morning around 7:00 this little bird and his friends have a meeting in my yard. He/she is actually BRIGHT blue, and I have no idea why in all my pictures it looks black. We have 8 windows in a row in our living room and this morning when I walked out of my room I saw that there was a bird in EVERY window looking in. Luckily Heather walked out at the same time and I could show her that we were being watched... So funny!

Here are the girls I was talking about on the mission team this week. This is Carrie (in blue) and Maggie. Neither of them have a parent on the trip nor are they from the same church as the rest of the team. Carrie's mom came on the trip last year which is how they got connected with this team. They are amazing and it was a blessing to hang out with them all week. It was a week full of laughter that I am most grateful for especially since I was exhausted and needed some fun/joy.

We decided we should take cute pictures together, so we took a lot of self pics. They both took hundreds of pictures on their cameras of us playing with kids, so when they upload them on facebook when they get home I'll post some on here.

Sarah joined the picture party. Sarah and her mom came on the trip and were amazing. They worked a lot with the children in the school and I thought it was such a cool trip to experience as a mother/daughter duo. Seeing them share this experience made me greatly look forward to my family coming to visit. I can't wait to show them what I'm doing here and have them share this which I hold so special with me.

The team wanted a picture of all the kids in the school, so I took advantage of the situation and took one to show y'all. On a side note what is so funny about the word y'all? Every Guatemalan asks me what the heck I am saying when I say it and every team I have met down here point out how many times I say it. I think it's about time the rest of the world catches on to how great of a word it is. :)

This team also brought recorders for the kids to play. It was pretty hilarious to watch them try to play. It reminded me a lot of when I was in college and had to take a stupid recorder class since I was an education major until I switched majors. My roommate and I used to sit in our dorm room and practice Hot Cross Buns and Mary Had A Little Lamb for days. It's sad, but I'm pretty sure if you gave these 5 year olds a week they could beat me in a chair contest.

This is the amazing team I have been talking about. I am going to miss them when they go home on Sunday. It was a joy to work with them this week. It made me really look forward to working with future teams. This may sound weird, but even though I haven't met any of them before I could picture them all in my church which made it weirdly comforting and reminded me of home.

I also loved that I got to work closely with some of the Guatemalan staff. It has been a slow process to get to know them because most of them don't speak any English and my Spanish is still horrible. However, this week I got to work with Archie (in the back row of the pic) who is a bus driver Salud y Paz uses a lot for teams and with Jose (front row). Jose works at Salud y Paz full time with teams. Both of them speak English, but would constantly talk to me in Spanish to try to help me learn. Our conversations would go like this a lot. We would talk a little in Spanish until they would say something to me that I had no idea what it was. Then instead of telling me what they said they would wait for me to go google whatever they said and come up with a response. Needless to say our conversations went on for hours and were filled with lots of laughter.

The team is spending the weekend in Pana and said that they would let me know what all they are doing, so I can join them. I have the day off tomorrow, so I think I am going to try to sleep in then do some chores around the house I've been putting off. Hopefully I'll get back to blogging more often. 

Lastly, I just thought I would update you on my Guatemala bug situation. A member on one of the mission teams last week left me a lot of lavender oil because the bites on my legs are so bad she thought I needed it (apparently it makes them go away faster). Also several people on this team have commented on how bad they look. If you watch Survivor (which I still do even after 20 something seasons) then do you remember the seasons when the contestants have so many bites on them that it looks like they have some horrible disease? Well Janet told me a couple of days ago that I could win a metal for how many bites I have on my legs. Not a contest I want to win. Also while I was writing this blog my roommate (who is sitting next to me on the couch) felt something biting her and discovered that it was a jumping bed bug (who knew they jumped??). I really hope I don't get bed bugs. I really don't want to have to wash my sheets and quilts by hand tomorrow. She also killed a cockroach while she was cooking dinner earlier and a few minutes ago I realized I was bleeding from a new spider bite. We are getting attacked!!!

If you feel like praying tonight maybe pray for all the bugs in our apartment to die... or you know for world peace.