BBQing in Peru

I love to entertain and play hostest even when we are traveling abroad! This time we are staying in a fully furnished apartment with plenty of room which is something I'm not used to. It's a new experience living in a third floor apartment right off a major road! I'm not too thrilled with the road noise but the view really makes up for it. Also cooking in a euro style kitchen makes me miss my "small" kitchen at home! Here are few pics from our little BBQ. I'll explain more with the pictures.

My favorite dish for the BBQ! I'm not sure if it was because it tasted so good or because of the presentation! I used Paula Dean's Asparagus with Lemon Butter you can find the recipe on my pin board....http://pinterest.com/pin/207376757811756069/

My first time making pasta salad from scratch! I have to admit I love the suddenly salad mix but it wasn't available in Peru. It's a must when we BBQ and I found several recipes and came up with this. I guess the portion on most of this, but it ended up great! I cooked the pasta according to the package then mixed in the following, 1 can/package of chopped black olives, 1 diced cucumber, 2 diced tomatoes, 1/2  red bell peper diced, 1 cup of chopped mozzarella, and a small bottle of italian dressing. I added a bit of vinigrette to it. YUMMY!

The biggest hit with the guest were these tortilla wraps. They had never had anything like them here. I used a the Fiest Pinwheel recipe. http://pinterest.com/pin/207376757811756094/

The perfect dessert to for any BBQ! This desert is from several recipes and I've altered it everytime I've made it. I usually make it with a pound cake but that wasn't available here in Peru, but vanilla cakes were! I crumbled up half the cake for the bottom layer. Then I poured half a can of condensed milk over the cake crumbles. The night before I sliced up 1 kilo of strawberries and mixed in a cup of sugar. I let that sit over night to have some juice sweet mixture to pour over the crumpled cake and condensed milk. For the next layer I whipped together whipping cream adding a tablespoon of sugar. I repeated everything to create the layers. This to was a big hit and I swear it's the easiest and quickest dessert for any summer gathering! P.S. I purchased the bowl at the grocery store, Metro and it's is so coming home in my suitcase!

I wanted to bring some flavor from home and decided on dirty rice. I made this from scratch too! I'm really getting proud of myself using old family recipes. My grandmother makes things all the time but never has a recipe out. I always ask her to give me the recipe for what she is making but she says the only way I'll learn is to cook it. So after years of watching her cook I'm finally learning the recipes! Dirty Rice is pretty easy and can be made the day before. I made this with chicken gizzards and liver. I'm also practicing writting out recipes so bare with me! I'm just as informal as my grandmaw taught me. I chopped up the liver into very small pieces and browned it with bacon fat. I chopped up the gizzards then blended them for a minute in the blender. I added the gizzards to the pot and continue to brown all the meat. I waited to untill they started sticking to the pot to add the veggies. I chopped up and added 2 stalks of celery, 1 red bell peper, 1 onion and 3 garlic gloves. I let them brown a for a minute with the meat. Next I added chicken stock and water to cook the rice. I used 4 cups of uncooked rice and 4 cups of chicken stock and 4 cups of water. Let that boil for a minute then turned it off and covered it for awhile. Did I mention this was my first time without my grandmaws help! PHEW it turned out YUMMY! I love southern cooking and love it even more when I get to share it with the world!

Well I should have snap this picture before pouring some glasses, but you get the point. Also had to do some editing to the recipe. Lots of what I make at home aren't available here. At home I make my sangria with concentrated apple and orange juice. Peru isn't a fan of frozen items. I decided to just go with Burgandy wine with fresh fruit slices (apple, orange, lemon) a little triple sec, sugar, and a 1/2 cup of apple juice and 1/2 cup of orange juice. I let about 2 gallons sit over night and the next day it was delicious!!

Thanks to dad and his grilling skills the BBQ was a SUCCESS!!

HERE ARE A FEW MORE PICS!

Getting caught up in Lima, Peru

Blogging from Peru. I've skipped a few weeks and have finally found a moment to blog. I have a lot of catching up on my cooking and traveling. A Traveler's Wife is as true as can be. We were in New York for a few weeks as a family of four while my husband took some classes for work. We returned home for the weekend to unpack and repack to seperate to different countries. I was heading to visit my dad in Lima, Peru for two months while my husband headed to work in Algeria for 3 months. This time was a little harder to seperate as we had been traveling together for the last 6 months. We've adjusted some and are finding our regular schedule to comunicate. With a six hour difference from Peru to Algeria the time actually works out great for us. Girls get time with daddy every day after there nap however there isn't video skypeing available until Chad finds better internet.

We have been in Peru for 4 weeks so far and it has FLOWN by too fast! We've enjoyed the city scene here and have made our rounds to several of the parks. Our weekly schedule is very relaxing! We picnic several times a week, visit the park daily, play at CityToys once a week, and enjoy the sun everyday! I'm also cooking while I'm here which is something I look forward to while I travel. I love the fresh food and markets near by and ff course with my luck I always seem to live near a bakery. Unfortunetly I'm not walking nearly as much instead I've been driving! CRAZY but I took my husbands advice, "Drive like you are in the states following every law even if no one else is. Drive with extra caution and always stay to the right." Well it's held up so far. We been exploring outside the city and further than we would walking. 

Back to cooking. Last weekend we hosted a party in our apartment for my dad's coworkers. Talk about throwing a party without the supplies. I had to really use my imagination to put this onne together. You can see for yourself it turned out great and we all had a blast! Here are a few pics of what we've been up to while in Lima, Peru. Some are from a few weeks ago but I'll explain more with the pictures.

Finding ways to entertain the girls abroad is always a challenge. I have my staple toys but that only last a few days. This day we decided to pull out the pots and pretend cook. This has been a weekly favorite for them!

Eating abroud another challenge when it comes to Alisia's age. The good ole pot trick, but I found that two big phone books work better. The only thing I miss is how easy I high chair makes meal time. 

Dyeing Easter Eggs turned out a lot of fun! I thought ahead and brought dye and I'm glad I did. Turns out they don't sell it here or it's hard to come by. Also a new for the book dyeing brown Eggs gives it a more earthy tone instead of the vibrant colors we're use to seeing with white eggs. Brown eggs are preffered here in Lima and white eggs are more expensive. Go figure!

Sugar cookies in Lima..POSSIBLE...I found sugar cookie mix in the box! We mixed it up, rolled it out, and thankfully I brought my butterfly cookie cutter from home to cut them out. Icing was a little bit tricky. I ended up using cream cheese, powder sugar, and vanilla. The texture turned out like royal icing which worked out well. I used a sandwich bag and piped the outline and filled it in. The girls put sprinkles on top for the final touch. We packed them up for our weekend Easter get away to Paracas, Peru

This is where we spent Easter weekend at the Paracas Hotel in Paracas, Peru. 

Aliana was a big helper the other day! I went on the other side of town to Jockey Plaza (a big mall) to do some shopping and I needed to run into the grocery store before we headed back to the apartment. I had Alisia in the stroller and didn't have an extra hand for a buggy and the carry basket was working out to well. A few minutes in the grocery store we spotting the perfect solution. Aliana was so excited to help out and she insisted that we go shopping there from now on!!

To be continued on my next post!