A taste of Arequipa

The big meal of the day for me is lunch. As is typical in most Peruvian households, we eat around 2:30 in the afternoon. At first it was very hard to change my eating schedule as my stomach put up quite a fuss for a week or so. However, now I have grown accustomed to it. Eating late allows me to go to my Spanish classes and also to the gym before lunch! I took a few pictures of my meals this week. The first meal was rice with lentils and hot sauce on top, then a salad with lettuce, chopped cucumbers, tomatoes, and avocado. With a little salt, it is quite tasty.


The second dish is a little more traditional from the mountains of Peru. Again there is rice with hot sauce, then a fried egg, some steak, corn and cheese. The corn and cheese are eaten together and the savor is quite excellent. Note how big the kernels are on the corn, not quite the same as my grandpa's sweet corn back in Holland, Michigan.


Finally, one of my all time favorites, mango. Growing up in Suriname we had a mango tree in our yard. We had the most excellent mangos that had predominantly green skin until they they were ripe, then they turned slightly light green. The mangos here are all yellow with red so I was skeptical at first because in Suriname that type had "strings" on the inside that always got stuck in between your teeth when you ate them.


I way happy to find out that the mangos here are very delicious and do not have strings! My supper this past week has consisted of cut up mango with an occasional banana or apple throw in for good measure.