I have moved into my new home! My house has four rooms, and indoor bathroom, electricity, and running water. My current projects in my community are teaching English, working with bees with my contact’s husband, making a garden at the school, and trying to motivate the farmers in my community to renew their committee for the coming year.
My landlord (and neighbor, and member of the farmers committee) allowed me to make a demonstration garden next to my house. In the picture below, my garden looks incredibly empty. BUT I planted hot pepper to make homemade insecticides, marigolds to attract beneficial insects, onion interspersed with beets (to demonstrate companion planting), and some rows of green manures (plants that aren’t edible but add nitrogen to the soil). If all goes well, soon enough these will all sprout.
My neighbor, known in the community as Medico Juan, or ‘Juan the Medic,’ was nice enough to give me three young banana trees from his grove to plant next to my garden. These are ‘banana de oro’ trees, and their bananas are smaller and sweeter than common bananas.
Below is the recipe for Paraguayan tortillas. In the US, tortillas are flat and used to dip or roll up with other foods. In Paraguay, tortillas are a type of fried dough, eaten as a snack or light dinner. Many people put vegetables, ground meat, or cheese in their tortillas, but they are often eaten plain. Of course, I’m partial to vegetable tortillas. In the picture above, there is yucca next to the tortillas, because Paraguayans often serve boiled yucca with tortillas, and with most other snacks and meals.
When I started this blog, I anticipated taking beautiful photos of the food I make to go along with my recipes. However, I tried for 4 days to get a good enough internet signal to send photos from my camera phone to my computer, and it didn’t work. In fact, every time I make a blog post I have to walk around the room for 20 minutes or so with my modem in order to find a spot with good signal, and sometimes I never find it. All of the photos I post will have to be from my Paraguayan cell phone and not always the highest quality, but hopefully the recipes I post will turn out delicious just the same, for anyone back home who tries to make them.
Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cups water
1 egg
½ tsp. salt
¼ cup finely chopped vegetables (I used tomato and onion in the batch in the photo above, but Paraguayans also recommend lettuce, green onion, chives, and chard.)
Heat oil in a pan over medium heat. It’s only necessary to cover the very bottom of the pan with oil. Mix all ingredients except the vegetables, then add the vegetables. Spoon into the hot oil and fry until golden brown.
annatravelsblog 