a juane is a food from the jungle... a present if you will, of rice packed around chicken olives and boiled egg. its cooked up in banana leaves, and just ...so so good. many of my friends/students are from the jungle and i had been planning with one of them to one day spend some time preparing juanes or jungle food together. i had no idea just how much time that entailed... until this past saturday...
our day began at 10:30ish when I Angela and her Aunt went to a local market in search of our ingredients... which began with a visit to the chickens... i had no idea what was about to happen, my first time to this particular market i was getting caught up in taking in everything around me when i realized the vendor had grabbed one of the chickens i was admiring to well, appropriately prepare it for our meal. that... was definitely my first experience watching that kind of process. i was trying to find saliva to swallow as i was also trying to understand angelas aunt explain that this was the cheaper market where everyone else comes to get their meat and veggies and everything else, then sell.
the markets are wonderful places full of colors and smells and everything you can imagine...eggs....
...sticks of cinnamon... barrels of olives...
...mountains of dried peppers and fresh garlic.... i wanted to take pictures at the market but was in the opinion that it wasnt safe for me to even take my camera let alone get it out for photos. angela encouraged me to act the tourist part though, so i timidly took a few pictures while securely holding my camera in both hands. the one thing i wish i had a picture of that i was too shy to take for it being too far of a step of looking the tourist, was of some people whom i am assuming were natives to a part in the jungle who were wearing traditional clothing and selling their medicines. they were walking the market trying to convince people to buy their jars of herbs/liquids. i have a bad that is made from material from the jungle and as they walked by us i heard their leader try to convince me to take their product and said 'but you are using my bag!!"
The first thing we had to do after our trip to the market was take the banana leaves and start to clean them. Johana, one of my students, took on this task:
the trick to learning the secrets of cooking peruvian food is watching a gifted aunt teach her niece how to appropriately prepare everything... we had to put the banana leaves over a flame until they slightly turned color so that they would be more flexible...
mixing up rice with the right color and aromas....
and finally putting it into the banana leaves with an olive, boiled egg and chicken to be wrapped then cooked.
see... its like a present no? all of the experiences of that Saturday were more than memorable from the chicken.. to watching angelas 8month pregnant aunt truck around the market with carrying a kilo of rice and more veggies with more strength and speed than myself... to preparing and wrapping up the juanes amidst stories of their family and the jungle... we spent plenty of good time together saturday preparing the juane for the next day sunday lunch.
sundays are by far by far my favorite day of the week. after the morning service at larco our normal routine is to gather together for lunch at a restaurant or in someones house as in this weekends case in my friends house for the juanes we had made, plus this amazingly tasty jungle soup made of peanut that her aunt surprised us with. we eat lunch then find someones home to relax in until the evening service. its just an awesome day of relaxing in the environment of friends on the Lords day of rest. its that time when you are so content that you just want to wrap up the moments/emotions/warmth/peace/comfort of finding rest into your own banana leaf and keep it for a day in the middle of the week when you need to be reminded of the peace that God extends to us.
that time between services is also so great because it serves like a time of common ground between the friends that i have already within the church and the friends that dont frequent the church so much.. a time when we can enjoy one another and be encouraged by one another... and usually the whole group goes together to the church for the night service. the sacrifice is a sunday nap, i think its well replaced.
