Today our Spanish teacher asked us if we would like to learn how to make chifles.  Of course we said yes.

After all, who can turn down a plantain “potato” chip (even if just for the experience)?

Our first stop was to the little corner store to buy a green plantain (a special type of plantain, not just an unripe yellow plantain).  This cost us $0.30.

Then we had to pick up some vegetable oil.  A half liter cost us $0.75.

We had a great break from class, and learned how to make something quite delicious and traditional.

Chifles

• 1 green plantain
• .25 L of vegetable oil
• Salt

First, wash the plantain.

It has a kind of sap on the outside of the skin that will turn your hand black if you don’t wash it off.  There’s also a glue”ish” substance, like with a banana, but more intense, between the plantain itself and the skin of the plantain (inside).  It can leave your hands quite sticky if you’re not careful when peeling. (They call it the milk of the plantain in Spanish.)

Peel the plantain.

Cut two parallel scores down the length, and peel the space between.  Continue until the whole thing has been peeled.

Set a frying pan on the stove and heat up the oil.

Slice the plantain as thinly as you can.

Fry in the oil until the plantain turns a bright yellow color marbled with brown.

Drain on paper towels.

Add salt to taste.

Eat and enjoy!

They may not be 100% healthy, but depending on the oil you use, chifles are better for you than any potato chips you can buy from any store.

They had to top that one with their next song, “This Too Shall Pass”.  You have to see their result:

Not one to shy away from a challenge, the band set about constructing a painstakingly executed two-story Rube Goldberg machine, set to trigger in time to the music for its latest video, “This Too Shall Pass.” Although it starts out small, with a toy truck knocking over some dominoes, the contraptions that make up the machine rapidly get larger and much more complex — pianos are dropped, shopping carts come crashing down ramps, and one band member is launched headlong through a wall of boxes. After assembling a team of dozens of engineers to construct the set, more than 60 takes were needed to get everything working just right during filming.

And just in case you somehow missed it, or just want to see it again, here’s the “Here We Go Again” video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI

He did that so that he can check out what the weather is like for us every day.

I think it’s really cool that he’s checking in on how things are going for us in a fun sort of way right there on his phone.

I found out he had done this when he asked me, “Are you getting used to the rain every day in Quito?”

It rains every day in Quito?

That’s news to me.  But that’s what his pocket PC weather says.

Apparently, it does rain every day somewhere in or around Quito.

Part of the reason we haven’t experienced much rain is because since we’re at nearly 10,000 feet above sea level, the whole valley of Quito is a series of rapidly changing micro-climates.

As a result, it’s hard to say that “the weather in Quito is…” because it will probably change soon, and because all of Quito is rarely experiencing the same weather.

Today is our first day of almost a full day of rain, but it broke and got sunny long enough for us to get back to our apartment after lunch.

We saw these really cool bulbous flowers growing on a bush (probably as a result of the rain followed by the sun), so I took a couple of pictures.

We like the weather in Quito though.

Every day it is between 60-80 degrees, and at night, it rarely drops below 50.

For me, it could be a bit warmer, but for Carrie it’s perfect.

When I was in grad school, and had had a bad day, Jonathan would offer to make me dinner to ease the tension a bit.  Sounds great right?

Well, for me, the problem was that after a hard day I wanted to de-stress.

Some people take a nice hot bath, others have a glass of wine.  Me?  I chop vegetables.

Fresh Farmers' Market Produce in Boquete, Panama - ALL of this cost $2.50

I decided that I might as well share.  I do have about 20 food blogs in my Google reader, so it’s high time I started sharing what I’m doing.

So, here goes.  I will do my best to be a food blogger.  My biggest challenge: renting and moving from furnished apartment to furnished apartment.  I never know what kitchen tools I’ll have and which ones I won’t.

My current challenge: no oven!  All things made here in Quito, Ecuador are made without an oven.  This makes them perfect for summer days.

Stay tuned…

Since it’s only 2 hours from Quito, we had to check it out.

From About.com:

Ecuadorian Textiles are world famous for their quality and history.

The history of the textiles goes back to Spanish colonial days when land around Quito was granted to various people, including one Rodrigo de Salazar who had the grant at Otavalo. He set up a weaving workshop, using the Otavaleño Indians, already skilled weavers, as the workforce. Over the years, with imported new techniques and tools from Spain, the weavers at Otavalo supplied most of the textiles used throughout South America. The downside of this economic success was that the Otavaleños were sometimes forced to labor at the looms in a system called Obraje. Today the Otavaleños have diversified their techniques with techniques from Scotland, and at Hacienda Zuleta created the Otavaleño cashmere and created a world-wide market for their textile products. You can see some of the techniques in the demonstrations at the Obraje Weaving Museum.

Otavaleños wear clothing distinctive to their area. Embroidered blouses, beaded necklaces and skirts for women, while men wear their long hair in braids and wear white trousers, ponchos and sandals.

Our “acquaintances” (acquaintances is a joke we’ll be happy to tell you about sometime) Kyra and Alex abandoned us for Mindo for the weekend, so we went with our friend Amy, instead of with a bigger group.

Amy’s great!  We look forward to spending more time with her.  Thanks again for letting us tag along with you Amy!

We took the Ecovia to the Rio Coca Station, where we took a taxi to Carcelen Bus Terminal (in the north of Quito). We met Amy at Carcelen Bus Terminal at 9:00.  All the way at the back of the terminal, there’s a small booth to buy tickets to the various cities that this particular terminal runs buses to.

We bought our ticket to Otavalo ($2 each) and went to board the bus.  To leave the terminal cost $0.20 each.  Weird.  I’ve never been charged to leave a bus terminal before.

Anyway, we saw two buses, and got on the second one.  It look less crowded.

We took our seats, and quickly realized that they weren’t our seats at all.  We had assigned seats!  (Good thing we got on the right bus.)

The bus was quite nice, nothing extravagant, but nice – especially for a short-distance bus.  They even showed a movie (Gone in 60 Seconds – en Espanol).

When we arrived 2 hours later, in Otavalo, we didn’t really know where to go.  We decided that the best course of action was to follow the crowds.

We did.  We found the market.

The most amazing thing about the Otavalo Market?  How peaceful it is.  I was amazed.  It was quiet, though bustling, calm though active.

There was so much to see.

Piles of yarn.

Stacks of alpaca scarves, blankets, shalls.

Hammocks

Little llama dolls made out of real llama/alpaca wool

And so much jewelery it could make your eyes hurt.

The colors were fantastic.  And the market just kept going on and on.

We did eventually make it to the church (at the end of the market).

There we saw an indigenous wedding party dressed in their Sunday best

as well as Super Man!

It’s always fun for us to look at pictures at the end of the day and see that we really are giants.

We all realized at about the same time that we were quite hungry.  So we sought out a place with a view.

We ran across a small café on the second level of a building.  Their menu looked great, and they had a fun view of the market down below.

They also had something none of us had ever seen before: Chocolate and mozzarella pizza.

Now, how can you see that on a menu and not order it?

I wish I had a picture of the waiter’s face when we ordered it.  He wasn’t just surprised, he was disgusted. Mind you, this was the WAITER!

The verdict: “Strangely good”.

After a really wonderful day at (another) market, we caught a bus back to Quito.

It was a bit hard to go from clean, fresh air (and finally being able to breathe), and the quietness of Otavalo back to noisy and polluted Quito.

But, for the moment, we’re happy to be calling Quito home.

More pictures from Otavalo market

These women were bargaining in Quecheua (The language of the indigenous people of this area).  It was fun to hear.

Look closely… she’s carrying a chicken by the feet. It’s still alive… presumably not for long.

We met at 9:00 am at the bus station at Colon and Avenida Americas (on the blue bus line in the middle of Quito).  From there we rode that bus all the way to the north end of its line.  At that station, we picked up another bus to the Mitad del Mundo.

(This second bus was very clearly marked, and easy to find.)  The first bus ride out of Quito lasted about 40 minutes, and it cost us $0.25 each.  The second bus ride from Quito to the Mitad Del Mundo, was about 30 minutes, and it cost us $0.15 each.

The bus pulled off on the side of the road, and the money collector (every bus has a separate person who collects the money) yelled that we were there.  We couldn’t see much, but trusted that the bus driver knew where we were.

We saw the entrance to the “park/city”, as it is lined with flags and statues.

We debated at the entrance as to which ticket to get.

There is a “combo” ticket pack (for $3.00 each) that includes the planetarium.   Since it was only $1 more, we decided to get it.

Our first stop was the equator. 

We had a great time taking fun pictures. 

My favorite is the one where we’re all jumping from one hemisphere to the other.

Can you believe that we got this picture on the first try?!

From here, we went to the planetarium.  I don’t really think it was worth the entrance price, unless you have little kids. It was a bit frustrating.  It was all just very basic information about a small part of the solar system, and the people behind us talked the whole time. Jonathan says he really enjoyed it, but wished the people behind us would have been quiet for at least 5 combined minutes of the 35 minute presentation. We are, after all, attempting to apprender Espanol.

Our next stop was to see what kind of souvenirs we could find in the tourist traps (shops).  We didn’t quite make it in any of the shops though, because we were distracted by Llamitas (little llamas) that were making more baby llamas.

Alex realized that he was hungry, so we went for some lunch.  We had a nice, if a bit overpriced, almuerzo (set lunch menu) at the restaurant in the park..

Then we were off to the museum.  We’d read that you could do all kinds of fun “equator” experiments there.

We were disappointed to find out that it cost us another $3 per person to visit the museum.

We were even more disappointed that there were no experiments to be found.  The whole museum was a display of a few of the indigenous tribes of Ecuador.  It was interesting, but everything was mock-ups of the actuals (even though many tribes are still using actual pieces today), so that made it less interesting (for me), and thus not worth an additional entrance fee.

But, the top of the museum did have a great view.

Jonathan says one of his favorite parts of the Mitad Del Mundo was the Ecuador Insectarium, where you can see the various insects of Ecuador. You’re not allowed to take pictures, but if you pay another $2, they’ll take a picture of you with an average sized beetle hanging out on your shirt.

(Bear in mind that these are average-sized beetles.)

We’re going to have to go back to find the “correct” museum with all the experiments.  We asked 3 people, and no one knew where it was.

However, after we returned to Quito, people told us where it was (of course). 

We might just have to go back to see all the experiments at the Mitad Del Mundo.

Oh, and sometime, we’ll have to tell you the story about the man whose wife got left behind while his hand got trapped outside the door of the bus as it drove off. (The rest of him was inside). To the best of our knowledge, no one suffered any permanent damage, but we were all a bit shocked.

Does Ecuador spring forward and fall back (with time zones)?

Nope.

We were on Eastern Time Zone with the US, now we’re in Central time zone.

Thanks for asking! 

My presentación was about how to make pizza, Carrie and Jonathan style.

I’m not posting the recipe on line, because the recipe for the dough has a secret ingredient.

But we did put on yummy toppings including salami, mushrooms (champiñones), red peppers (pimiento rojo), onions (cebolla), and green olives (aceitunas verdes).

It was a delicious way to practice imperative forms of words (put – pon (put it in the pan), press – presione la masa (press the dough), open – abre el horno (Open the oven), etc.)

Carrie picked up a beer during our break (before we made the pizza), so we got to have beer and homemade pizza for lunch here in Quito!

Muy delicioso, y muy Rico!

The whole process was actually quite simple:

• Go in, fill out a form
• wait for your number to be called
• explain to the person behind the glass that you need more pages in your passport
• wait 25 minutes
• get back your passport with more pages in it

Our passports now look more like little books than just little passports.

Look at the flag in the distance. It's the red, white, and blue. This was as close as I could get without getting in trouble for taking a picture.

We’re excited to fill up those extra pages!

Things you might want to know:

How much did the extra pages cost?
$0.00.

Good stuff!

I got in trouble for taking this picture. But they didn't make me delete it, so that's good.

Interesting points from the United States Embassy:

• Even before you enter the grounds of the United States embassy, there are guards there letting you know that it’s not okay to take pictures. No electronic devices were allowed in with us. Carrie had to check her Kindle, and I had to check my camera, at the door. We could, however, take our watches.
• The embassy grounds are BIG, and the embassy is significantly outside of the city. Every day, we walk by the embassies of England/Germany (same building), Belgium, Norway, and Mexico. All of them are pretty much right here in the city, and while they do have gates and ways to close things off, none are as expansive as the grounds of the U.S. Embassy. For me, it was neat to see, a bit pretentious, and intimidating, all at the same time.
• To get there: Take the Ecovia all the way to the Rio Coca Station ($0.25). From there, take a taxi to the “embajada (em-buh-hah-duh) Americana. Make sure they “empieza la metro, por favor” (“Use the meter, please” It’s about $1.50 to the embassy.)

At our Spanish school, we took a class to learn how to make Empanadas. This class was taught by one of the teachers at our Spanish school in Quito, Ecuador.

At the end, the empanadas were completely delicious (though I neglected to actually get a picture or video of anyone actually EATING one).