Follow Our Adventures in Cooking

Have any of you seen that movie or read the book  Julie & Julia by Julie Powell?

I haven't read the book but I have seen the movie. It's what had somewhat inspired me to start blogging about food a long time ago. I enjoy eating food, making food, and critique food, as well as my family.

I used to be the worst cook ask Josh he'll tell you. I made easy microwave meals, over cooked things, or burnt them. Baking is still something that I'm not good at but my cooking has gotten way better. I'm also completely self taught too, although my mom might have taught me a few things I was still pretty clueless when it came to actually cooking and preparing good food.

When I first started staying home with Katy I decided I would become better at being a homemaker, that was my new job, right? So I started reading more things from the likes of Martha Stewart to find ways to create fun in the home for the kids and our family. I also was watching Food Network cooking shows, but non of those weird reality cooking competition shows though, no offense those are not my cup of tea. I enjoyed watching Ina Garten, Giada De Laurentiis, and Sunny Anderson. From there I started some crazy kitchen adventures and then my skills got better and better. Along the way however I botched a TON of items. There were nights that I was excited to try something new and we still resorted to PB&J after, that still happens today as well.

Living in Lima brings about new cooking adventures, I've had to learn how to make a lot of items from scratch that were so easy to buy in the states. So along with trying to create old favorites Im also learning to cook peruvian food.

This is where the above book comes into play. Not so much the actual book but the idea of it. One day I was sitting around our home trying to find something other than reading that I could fill my days with. I got this crazy idea that I would try to do what Miss Powell did but with a Peruvian cookbook. I decided I wanted to write about the ups and downs of my journey through cooking and eating Peruvian food.

So I've been creating and plotting for the past few months and I finally have the page up but no posts written yet. My entire idea of the blog is to talk about anything that pertains to the gastronomic  world of Perú. I wont hold back if I don't like something I'll kindly tell you what I didn't like about it, same thing with what I do like, and if I totally botch a dish I'll talk about it and even have photos of the mess that resulted.

The book that I found in my online searches is a book by a very well known and famous Peruvian Chef, Gastón Acurio. He owns several restaurants across the city and hosts a tv show as well. His most recent book Perú is the book that I picked. There is over 500 recipes from him in this book, which has sections for Ceviches, Appetizers, Street Food, Soups, Dinners, Desserts, Drinks and even Condiments.

I can't wait to share it all with you, and I hope that you follow along. Josh may chime in from time to time about things as well because I'm not the only one who loves to eat and find new things across the city.

Be sure to Check back soon or subscribe to receive emails with each post in the top side bar for the blog.......Here's a link to it too......Servido

Summer Activities

Katy and Zechariah are on summer break. Weird you say? Katy agrees...and she also misses snow. 

The kids are restless though. Throughout the school year they are in school from 8-5 Mon-Fri so we had to find something for them to do. Katy is in Gymnastic classes and Z is going to start speech classes soon. 

Katy started Gymnastics today. She had a blast but did fall one time, she's totally embarrassed too that she fell. But she is my daughter, I hate to break it to her but she's destined to be clumsy. :(

Our District

Lima is divided up into Districts, Josh works in La Victoria it's right next to the District that we live in, San Borja. We enjoy visiting Barranco and Miraflores every now and then with the kids, and Josh and I visit the Centro of Lima frequently (District Lima). We have team members in Los Olivos and just recently Cailtlin found a nice place for herself in Lince. So the team is scattered about everywhere now.

Our Neighborhood of San Borja is a small middle class district. Our neighbors actually just moved into San Borja from La Victoria, something that they are very proud of. San Borja is rather nice there are parks everywhere, Starbucks on almost ever corner (not every but there are ALOT). There is a large government building by our house called the Pentagonito (Cuartel General del Ejercito del Perú) they have a park and LOTS of fitness classes and fitness events around it.  

Our neighborhood is very quiet and tranquil, we've been told this on many occasions when we have people at the house during the evening.  Although during the day we may have something like 20 people working in the park to cut the grass and flowers, and or a guy on a bike riding around blowing a whistle for people to know that he's around to sharpen knives. Our ice cream man is also different here there isn't a big truck that plays music, we have a guy on a bike with a freezer on the front and instead of annoying loud kids songs he blows a whistle that sounds like a duck quacking. Another fun thing our recycling truck plays the Celine Dion song from Titanic too.

We like our neighborhood, and feel safe living here. We are walking distance from the kids school and from a lot of other things that we can do as a family. We wish you could all visit so you can experience everything that Lima is.

Happy Mother's Day!

Hey everyone!

I hope you are having a wonderful Mother's day. 

We've been a bit lazy around the house this morning. Although as soon as I've posted this I'm going to clean up the house and wait on groceries to be delivered. A mom's work never ends even if it's mother's day. This afternoon though we have some fun activities planned. 

Yesterday Katy and Zachary (the name Z has decided to use at school) had their school play. There are a few videos below that you can watch. It takes a bit to upload them to youtube so there will be a few more video's of Z's performance.  Zechariah's School "Little Twain" has few enough students that they were able to do one big show with everyone. While each class in Katy's School "Mark Twain" did individual class skits. Katy's class sang "Como un Angel" or "Like an Angel". She's been practicing with a youtube video of that song for weeks now.

We hope you have, and wish you all a very happy mother's day!

After the plays.

My morning coffee and donut in bed. I asked Zechariah if he was going to bring me coffee in bed and he replied with "yeah and a donut!" 

Katy trying her very first cup of coffee, she wanted to see what all the hype is about. It's very very very watered down and she added sugar, she said it was ok.  

Tour of Our Home Part 2

In this part of the tour you'll get to see the kids rooms. They both picked the color for their rooms and Katy requested the bunk in her room have room for her to put a desk under. She'd like a bean bag to put under there to read in. But for now she has the extra chair from the living room in there.

Tour of Our Home Part 1

Hey everyone I've been asked about what our house looks like here in Peru from several people. I did have a post where I had a bit about our home but I never uploaded a photo tour like I have in the past. I'm planning to do this in parts though because it'll take a while to load all the pictures into one post. 

So for starters You get to see our roof top deck and living area/Kitchen. We also just had it painted everything was white when we moved in, and it was primer so we needed to paint everything. Since we needed to paint we opted to pick out colors for the rooms. The terrace is so much better now that there are darker colors, it's not so bright and you don't get and instant headache from the brightness.

The Dog house is my next project. I'm going to paint it gray.

Enjoy!

Making Wishes

Remember awhile ago I mentioned some of my favorite books.  One of those was Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park. In the book one of the characters has a Christmas tradition of laying under her tree and making wishes for the coming year. I told this to the kids and they decided that was a great idea. Josh says we are weirdo's but here are our under the tree photo's and even the cat got excited and she makes wishes under the tree as well.

          

Going to School

Katy and Z have been in homeschool basically since a few weeks after we settled into Lima. But over the past few months Josh and I have discussed how getting the kids into a school program here might be the best idea.  

Its a very hard decision to make especially when you live in a foreign country. The American english speaking school is pretty far from our house and we'd have to take a taxi every day to get to it or the kids would have to ride a tiny bus to it. Also the american school is rather expensive, like so high I wondered if it was actually a college. So after talking to several missionaries and discussing what we thought our kids could handle, together we decided on a small private school that is very close to our house, very reasonably priced, and has a great curriculum.

The school is very small, the staff is friendly, the students are exceptionally behaved, the programs that the kids will get to be a part of are pretty amazing, the classes are very small and a lot of the teachers speak english so when Katy or Zechariah are more extensively learning the language the teachers can help with explaining something to them in english and such.  They do have an hour of english class each day where they will be learning english, grammar, etc. 

There are opportunities for them to learn dance, music, tennis, swimming, etc. There classes go from 8 am to 5 pm and they are sent home without homework. 

The kids were able to go to classes for free this past week and they loved it. They are already making friends and such as well. 

On the second day I went to pick up both kiddos while waiting this boy kept peeking out of the kitchen/lunchroom at me and smiling. One of the teachers brought Zechariah out and then went off to grab Katy from her class. While Zechariah and I were waiting on Katy the little boy who had been peeking around the door came out and asked me "¿Eres la madre de Katharina?" Are you the mother of Katharina? I replied with Si/yes and he smiled really big and when Katy came down the stairs with another boy from her class he came back out to wave bye to Katy and both boys wished her a good afternoon and see you tomorrows, and so it begins.  :)

Time to Catch Up!

It's been awhile since I've posted anything and there is good reason for that. We finally found a place to live here in lima, and we've been getting settled in. Also a lot has been happening with the church in La Victoria, we've also found a school for Katy and Zechariah to attend.  We have also been exploring other neighborhoods and areas of the city as well.  Josh and I also were able to meet the US Ambassador at a town hall meeting in the US Embassy here in Peru. That was a fun experience.

We decided that for the family it would be best for us to live in a neighborhood called San Borja. There is plenty to do the neighborhood and the ones surrounding it and a lot of things are only a bus or taxi ride away. We can actually walk to a lot of things like the kids school, the park, starbucks, a mall with a huge arcade, etc. Josh can walk to the mission offices, and he can take a buss ride to the church in La Victoria.

Because we are living in another country our dollar can go a lot further. So we were able to find a nice apartment that has a roof top terrace, and a room for guests if anyone ever visits. Right now the area that we will use for guests though is home to a deaconess intern for a few more months.  The area is on the second floor of our apartment and it is sort of separate from the rest of the house. The kids each have there own rooms and they have a bathroom to share. My favorite part is a small but functioning kitchen and my huge red couch.

Our building we are the top left.

In Peru it is common for people to have someone to clean there house and often times that person lives in the house. We do have an area in the house that is reserved for a maid but we do not use it for this purpose.  I actually have a huge metal shelf in the shower in the servants bathroom to use as storage.  But we keep the bathroom open enough so guests can use it when we entertain on the terrace. The room that is meant for the maid to live in is really not that much bigger than a twin bed, we use it as a reading room. Over all we are blessed with and very grateful to have a wonderful place to live.

~~~La Victoria~~~

There have been several events that have happened in the church and school in La Victoria. We have had five services so far in the church and a few events for the school.

Church and School Sign.

Some of the students dancing a folk criollo dance. Click here to see them dance.

The Alter in the new church in La Victoria.

The Church right before our first service.

Job and his son Gabriel playing music at the lunch after our first service.

This is a recent school field trip. We went to a local fountain park for the kids to play in the water. Including 3 staff, the deaconess, and our family we had 79 people show up. What a turn out!!

The Food Blog

I'm going to be making peruvian / latin american foods and posting them on my food blog so make sure that you check it often.  I'll also be making other things too and posting them but at first there might be quiet a few posts about foods from latin america.

The Venerable Cuisine

Large white corn, aka chocholow

Where we're at in Peru

We are finally in Peru and have been settling in this past week. We were originally going to rent a furnished vacation home until we found something more permanent. But Caitlin the deaconess intern working here in Peru offered up her apartment to our family. She said she could stay at the office while she looks for a peruvian family to live with. We are really grateful for this because the apartment in literally two house down from the main office/church for the mission in peru. And we aren't stuck with a place that isn't what we saw online. That's happened before and doing that in a foreign country is would be really scary. 

So here is a look at our temporary home that we will be in until we find our permanent place.

Our welcome to Peru gifts.

First morning breakfast in the garden room.

The Master bedroom.

The dinning room table.

The rack by the door that has a lot of peruvian
and guatemalan wears on it.

The Kitchen

The dining room to living room, and off the
side that's a basket full of homeschooling supplies.

Peruvian Birds

The kids room.

The outside of our building.