Friday, February 25, 2011

Cuencano Culinary


We have discovered the art of cooking. We don't know how it happened or why . . . but it did. We are suddenly, to put it lightly, cooking geniuses; and I have to admit that we have done little to nothing wrong in our culinary attempts over the past few weeks. When we first moved to Ecuador, we easily fell into a rut of tomato and onion based everything. We played it safe with fresh tomato sauce and pasta, veggie sandwiches and countless rice and beans varieties. Not now . . . oh not now. It was time to break free of our pico de gallo ingredients, and we broke past those barriers throwing our inhibitions and tomatoes out the window.

Over the past week we have made: banana pudding, apple-cinnamon rolls, the best pizza on the most delectable pizza crust ever, breakfast burritos with fresh guacamole, enchiladas, carrot cake without a recipe and with cream cheese frosting, apple pancakes with cinnamon-apple syrup and yogurt, strawberry pancakes with strawberry-yogurt syrup, broccoli-green bean-mushroom alfredo sauce, citrus tea, Semi-German Chocolate Cake with coconut icing, and All, might I add, from scratch with no packaged anything.

You may look at that and think, "sugar!" You'd be right. We've overloaded ourselves on sugar, but that doesn't mean we won't go home and eat a piece of carrot cake before bed. Because we will. Oh we will.

We are attempting to eat as local as possible, which for us means all of our produce comes from local vendors who have farms in the mountains nearby Cuenca and all of the dry goods come from somewhere in Ecuador. And if you think eating locally is a struggle, take a second look:

Strawberry Pancakes

Ryan's Birthday Spread


How we feel when we taste the juicy fruits of our newfound talents

The perfect pizza crust

Second Christmas!

Carrot Cake Photo Shoot
Semi-German Chocolate Cake

Black Bean Lasagna