Cooking in PERU

… On a recent trip to PERU the family wanted me to make american pancakes.. we went to the market where they said they had ‘sweet potato’ flour.. (they make a kind of donut from the sweet potatoes called a PICARUNI) and so I thought it was worth a try.. The flour was a little expensive for Peru, but after all it was Sweet Potato flour .. and it sounded good.

As I mixed my ingredients, my batter got thicker and thicker and everyone was laughing at my “American Pancakes.” trying to blame the room temperature milk or the eggs or ??  As it turned out, it was the Harina de Camote…what we thought was Sweet Potato flour was actually CORN STARCH.

Our goal in Peru is to build Pecasas… QUALITY, AFFORDABLE and SAFE, with an additional goal of building a home that will last for generations.

The issue keeping our Pecasa from being a 500 year home is the cement and rebar… STEEL is NOT a 500 year product and, not to get technical, but we’re working with some of the world’s most innovative builders to solve the problems of rusty steel, wind forces, earthquakes and cracked cement.

I’ll have photos here soon.. and look forward to your suggestions and participation on this site.

Today we were in the downtown area of Chiclayo when we received a phone call from a man wanting to talk to us about building Pecasas in his town… he wanted to meet with us and when we described where we were he was parked in front of us… not 5 feet away.

We arranged to go on the radio in his town and tell the community about the project..

It is a fishing town.. now Please don’t imagine a cute little Italian village.. far from it, but it was interesting.  They have a large area to build on .. right at the shore.

The market is young people living with family and wanting a home of their own.. most are fishermen and make a good wage and can afford a house (for $15000).

After our tour we went to the radio station..  ”I don’t see a radio station!” .. sure enough there was a radio station.. kind of.  There were some girls, a table.. dirt floor .. walls of cardboard.. cardboard door, a plastic stool and YES … a microphone.  The man was very nice and patient with me.. I did good.

After that we went to a restaurant..In a fishing town,  of course, we had fish.. Civiche (raw fish with sea weed)  a “sting ray” omelet.. it was excellent.. and we talked about building a dome in which they could process the fish for export.

It was a great ride home.. through the rice fields. The Señor was very pleased with us and I’m going to spend some time now doing a preliminary design for them, then we’ll work on some numbers… there is little information right now..   We’ll go a few more steps with them.. If he becomes mayor .. many doors will open.. if not.. well .. it can’t hurt.