The Food Post (Part I)

I've been meaning to post about the food here in Lima for a while! Unfortunately, I never seem to have the time to blog lately (having two little kids at home full time will do that to a person). So since it's 9 pm, I'll cut to the chase: from what I've seen in my limited time here, Peruvian food is delicious, fresh, and healthy. A few people told me my first week here that I'd gain the "Freshman 20" but I'm not sure what exactly they're eating. We are blessed with an empleada who is a very good cook, and nothing she's made is unhealthy. It's all fresh and from scratch (which is a lot more than I can say for what I was eating in America!). I'm sure if we were eating out more, it would be a different story, but since there aren't any restaurants near where we live and we don't have a car...delicious home cooking it is!

Of course, any cuisine, no matter how tasty, gets a little old after a while. I'm craving Thai food like nobody's business. Our poor empleada is also severely limited by our weird dietary restrictions (no meat for the kids and me, no gluten for John) so I ordered a couple of Spanish-language cookbooks to broaden our options. Sadly, we've only eaten out a few times here, but I hope to remedy that in the coming months. In the meantime, I'm super grateful not to have to cook every night!

And now for some pictures:

Ceviche, shrimp soup, and fresh guacamole (a la John)

Ceviche here is served with onions, sweet potato, and the best corn in the world

The fruit options here are ridic. This is cherimoya. It tastes kind of like mango.

Rice, french fries, and lomo saltado (a beef dish that John seems to enjoy)

Empanadas and other deliciousness at a little store near our house

Fruit at the mercado

Everything from tofu to sweet potato chips.
(Thanks to my friend Marisol for showing me how it works!)

And last but not least, our go-to dessert when we're out of ice cream:
whipped cream and dulce de leche. Trust me, it's amazing.

Tomorrow we're heading down the coast to Paracas for a few days of vacation. Hopefully we'll have even more delicious food experiences to share soon. I'm expecting many more parts to The Food Post over the next two years.