This was the fin de semana of pasta. Or food in general. But a lot of that food was pasta. I’ll go by anecdotes, but its going to end up just describing meals because that’s what mainly happened this weekend.
On Friday afternoon, I had spaghetti on the brain. I stopped at a store on the way home from the bus stop to see if they had tomatoes to make a sauce. They were out, and I was all sad walking home until I went into the kitchen and found….marinara sauce! Just what I was hoping for. Jimmy and I both took naps, and when I got up there was a nun in the living room. I felt like Ke$ha, “wake up in the morning and there’s a nun at the table, grab my glasses Im out the door I’m gonna hit this…stable….” OK maybe not Ke$ha. I’d never actually met a nun before, so I was sort of scared but she was mostly very deaf and silent. She had been a nun since the month before my Ecuamadre was born, more than 53 years. Wow. She is my madre’s great aunt, she’s not just some random nun.
Anyway, so we ate spaghetti, my host mom, my metal head brother, our maid, this nun and I, and drank tea and ate canned peaches. That’s just how things go sometimes.
Wario and Vampira, my girlies, came over, and we went shopping at the cheap import stores near my house, lay around and chatted. We drank mocha and coffee and I discovered yet again that I really can’t drink milk. It really hurts me. We went downtown and sat around at this bar that actually serves those giant fishbowl drinks they warn you about before you go on Spring Break in Miami Beach or something. Instead of paying lots of money to get into clubs, I ate the best hamburger I have eaten in my life. Granted, that number is probably about a dozen, but this was so damnably good. It wasn’t a meat thing at all, it was the fried onions and mustard and perfectly toasted bun. A culinary experience, that burger. And even better given that it was 11:45, I was sitting on a lawn chair in downtown Quito and the fishbowls were going swimmingly.
That night ended late, but I managed to get myself up by 9 and have some fruit and granola and horrifically sweet yoghurt. I drink a lot of yoghurt here, and some of it is good and some of it is bad and bright pink. I went running in Parque El Ejido, which actually meant jogging fast for like 12 minutes and then powerwalking to the playground. They have the best playground in Parque El Ejido! There is a slide that is like two stories high and a zip line and this giant round swing. Everyone should go. I got home and watched some Sex in the City. For some inexplicable reason, we have disc two of season six, so I watched all of that. I didn’t understand the plot lines when I started and now I’m left in suspense. I need to find discs one and three!
At that point, it was time for lunch. My mom has a friend that makes pasta, so we boiled up some of her spinach raviolis and made pesto: basil, spinach, olive oil, garlic, and nuts in the blender. Bright green. We also made a salad with some ancient lettuce, red onions and a whole perfect avacado. Balsamic vinegar and sesemae oil dressing. Perfect. Ate a ton with my ma, chilled out and watched Jimmy and his girlfirned eat a ton. Raviolis are just perfect to pick out of the bowl.
A couple of hours later, I went over to my buddy Mike’s house for dinner. Mike is a big guy, a big Italian guy, and he misses good cooking and big meals, so he had about ten of us over and made pasta. When I got there, they were pouring in the third cup of heavy cream into the pot, and were glad I had brought the vodka. For vodka sauce. Let me tell you, it is really classy going to ask your local bodega owner for the “cheapest, smallest vodka.” You tell them its for cooking, and they don't believe you.
But it was for cooking, and the sauce was excellent. Rediculously rich and excellent. We had salad with dressing Hannah brought from Michigan and this amazing pasta and ridiculously created cookies a la Scott and Dita. We just threw ingedientes that we recalled are in cookies in a bowl and baked little lumps. We also almost added a cup of salt, because Mike’s family likes to keep salt in a jar labled “sugar.” They turned out really tasty, if texturally bizarre.
We sat around for a while, then decided to take a walk. We made it about ten blocks away to near Malcolm’s house, to a giant fluorescent panederia that would make the Beat Generation blush with nostalgia. Madre is sure it is a money laundering place, and I sort of believe her, and sort of just think she is judging the owners for being Colombian. We ordered cookies and coffee and sat there till they closed the place down at ten. We all went home to sleep off all that heavy cream.
The next morning, I watched I Heart Huckabees, which isn’t as good as the first time. Oh well. I ate a pretty bad omlette. Oh well. My madre and I walked near abuela’s house to the big weekend market. The last time I went there, it was my second or third day or something and I was so completely overwhelmed that I think I blocked the memory or something. This time, my Spanish was better, my propreoception less acute, and I was in an overall better mood. We bought fruit for juice, and that was awesome because I got to pick, so no diaretic-papaya juice this week, oranges, bok choi, beets, and eggplants. Ecuadorians have no idea what to do with eggplants, my madre couldn’t even think of the name for it. The lady selling was like “good thing your gringa knows what to do with these, its hard to sell them.” Anytime, old indigenous lady. Another old indigenous lady gave me a fruit so acidic and stringy I knew it wasn´t meant for human consumption. You got me there, second old indigenous lady.
We went to a baby clothes store and bought some really cute little romper things for Madre’s friend who is having a baby in like 3 days. I bought some underwear that say “100% intelegente” on them. Sometimes, its worth the 1.50$.
We went home and started making lunch. Madre gave me detailed instructions on how to make cibeche and I wrote them down in my notebook. Maybe if you are lucky, I’ll make it for you. She worked on the soup, boiling a whole chicken, feet and head included, although she strained those out so that you can put them in when you want them. She claimed the stomach and a food, and left Jimmy the head. Her very very pregnant friend came over and claimed the other foot. I was glad to be left out.
Soup and civeche isn’t really a meal, so my madre was like “COOK THESE EGGPLANT please.” I did some quick internetting and made eggplant parmesian, fried in a skillet in palm oil. Madre, pregnancy Doris and my evil neighbor Parilla were fascinated by it. They were aquainted with the bread crumbs-egg dipping process, but the idea of brining the eggplant, the idea of the eggplant in general was totally foreign. They were like “what could we eat this with?” “what culture does this come from?” “Is this healthy?” At one point, Parilla was like “This would be so good with cheese! And catchup!” She was close.
Malcolm and another friend of Madre came over, and we had lunch. The cibeche was the best I’ve had, the fish tender and flakey, the onions really crunchy, the broth perfect. Of course, we put popcorn and banana chips in it. Two months ago, if you told me I'd be eating blanched fish in orange juice with pop corn in it, I’d have gagged. Today, I just wished for more.
Then we had soup, fresh chicken broth with pieces of ginger, parsnip, and bok choi. Wow. So simple and safe tasting. There’s more of that, and I’m having it for breakfast.
Then we had the eggplants. They were pretty greasy but I got the proper crumb consistency without too many burnt spots or hard middles. It was so funny to see them eat it. My madre refused to eat the skin. Her other friend scraped off all the breading to eat after the eggplant, and the third friend tried to eat it with guacamole.
After that, we just sat around eating the guacamole with banana chips, which is, in my humble opinon, a better guacamole-carrying apparatus thatn the tortilla chip. I know that's pretty sacreligious, but stay with me on this one. We sat around the table and talked about, among other things, urine therapy (that's where you drink your own pee) and how madre’s one friend put her grandson’s urine on his face to cure some sort of white marks he had on his face. She would get him to pee in a cup, and then like wait fifteen minutes until “he’d half forgotten that he’d gone pee” and then “go up to him with the cloth already wet to wash is face.” It made the white marks go away, though. Apparently, the gunk the baby it covered in when it gets born is really good for wrinkles, and both madre and friend are mad they didn’t get it from their kids. Pregnant Doris had no comment.
Then I watched like three hours of MTV and did my homework. Madre and her friend the urine obsessed went for a walk, and when they came back, they were Hari Krishna crazy. Apparenty there are Krishnas in the Old Town on Sundays, and they gave them all this information about healthy vegetarian eating. I’m down for that, so we talked about ghee and baba ganoosh and how to get protein from legumes for a while. Then we had coffee and a some horrible chocolate cake. The weekend was coming to an end. But the cherry on the sundae? From some hippies selling them in Old Town, my madre brought Jimmy and I some aphrodesiacial choclate cookies. I think I’ll save that till later.
