My Peppers are Stuffed!

I’ve been crazy busy trying to absorb all of the new information our trainers have been throwing at us in order to prepare us for our field-based training next week.  Yes, we are actually going to a real site in the hills of Huancavalica, about a 7-hour drive south of Lima.  We will be helping the community build latrines, cooking stoves and micro-garbage dumps. 

Proper places to poop and toss out garbage are essential for obvious reasons – to avoid the spread of disease through proper handling of waste – but what about the cooking stoves?  In rural communities in Peru, women still make small fires on the dirt floors inside their homes to cook their food, which:

--requires a lot of fuel/firewood,

--is a fire hazard,

-- fills the house with smoke (contributing to lung dangerous infections for mothers and      children)

--and the women get a hunchback from leaning over the fire for hours

In response to the need for improved cookstoves, some crafty engineers developed a few designs for cookstoves that solve all of the above issues and are relatively inexpensive to build, and in most cases the Peruvian government or an NGO (an international aid organization) is footing the bill for it.

You can find out more about improved cookstoves (cocinas mejoradas):

http://www.cleancookstoves.org/countries/america/peru.html

In addition to preparing for my field-based training, I have also been working with a local family with a young daughter who is almost four years old.  We have been practicing some of our early childhood development techniques on her, including nutrition education.

Remember the old food pyramid?  Peru’s Ministry of Health has tossed the pyramid out the window and replaced it with three food categories:

--Foods that Give You Energy (carbs, fats and sugars)

--Foods that Help You Grow (proteins)

--Foods that Protect You (fruits and veggies)

Makes sense, right?  It re-arranges everything into new categories, so you’ll find veggies in the carbs/fats category (avocado) which make sense, but also you’ll find proteins in the carbs/fats category (peanuts) which makes my head spin.

Since we are already on the topic of food, we made stuffed peppers (rocoto relleno) in our Spanish class:

 

(Photo of me with my rocoto relleno)

 

(Photo of my Spanish class munching on their rocoto rellenos)

Here's a recipe if you are interested in making one for yourself!
http://perudelights.com/rocoto-relleno-fire-in-your-mouth/