Peruvian Delicasies

Today the weather has decided to be more tropical than Scottish, it was explained to me that during this time of year, winter time locally that sometimes the wind comes from the Andes and it brings down these cold winds and yes indeed it was mighty cold, cool really but as I haven’t seen a northern hemisphere winter in 4 years I am not used to it anymore. The food here in the Malvinas camp is typical Peruvian and this includes soup for every meal including breakfast. Sometimes the soup is really stew as it was this morning and in fact it was more like a local version of a chicken curry and that was basically all you could have for breakfast other than bread rolls and yoghurt. That is fine by me the soups are generally very nice and one the other night was very unusual, it has these giant swollen corn kernels and pigs stomach, I was quite happy to eat it as a child my family was relatively poor and we ate lots of pigs stomach, called tripe in the UK, and so it wasn’t too abnormal for me but I have never had it in soup before, there are beans or all varieties to be served with the meals and lots of stews with huge chunks of beef, this is great stuff if you like it every meal but it can get a bit tiring and when I ask for a small portion of rice they look at me quite gone out, as though I have almost insulted them, they like everyone to feel stuffed I think so I am trying not to gorge my face with all the carbs but eat light and try a little of the salad which is typical stuff but lots of Red Beet. The problem is that they serve fantastic little deserts which I cannot leave alone, condensed milk is usually added somewhere along the way, in between and on top and makes them just fantastic to eat, they also have great crème caramel and egg custards, baked apple deserts and tons and tons of fruit, some interesting ones I have never seen before like a cacti fruit, something like a prickly pear but without the prickles. It was terrible, not juicy and full of hard stones which everyone else seemed to swallow down, I couldn’t do it, it felt like having a mouthful of pebbles. Sometimes they make cream filled choux pastry things all creamy and with a slice of peach, just amazing for this environment, who would have thought that an oil camp in the jungle would be making choux pastry, fantastic. There is no way I am going to lose weight here, I haven’t got back into going to the gym yet after my flu but I am going to be fighting with the weight here without a doubt,
This afternoon I have two new engineers with which to ingratiate myself , I have to establish whether they can speak English , like English people or like Pignone people, so it is a fine balancing act to start with and once things are settled then we can begin to talk like professional engineers. Hopefully if I offer them some free music then all things will fall into place. So once more into the battlefield of anarchy and lost drawings. Print Article
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