Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Peru Spring 2015 Day 3

We woke up and I made coffee and Daniela had some juice.  We then got dressed and walked out to El Parque del Amor and then over to the lighthouse and then back to the apartment. I think the walk is about 2.5 miles with almost no elevation changes.  So not too bad but also not too tough.  It was very sunny out except for at the actual coastline where it was quite foggy. We walked into the fog at the park and then back out when we cut back inland.

After the walk I prepared some grilled cheese sandwiches for breakfast for us and we had more juice and coffee. Daniela showered while I cooked then we ate then I showered while Daniela went down to the office (tough commute for her for work this week).  I finished cleaning up some things then eventually headed downstairs also. There we decided I would make lunch for everyone (Daniela, Donna and Dianita who is helping at the office for a bit).  They requested pasta (or at least Donna did) so we bought the ingredients at the Vivanda then I headed up to the apartment and Daniela went back to the office to work.

At the apartment I started by sauteing some yellow onion, adding garlic, then I added diced fresh tomatoes and let those simmer for a couple of hours to reduce. I didn't peel or seed at this point because I thought I had a good sieve but I had to use the regular pasta strainer when it was done.  While the sauce was simmering I made meatballs by pulsing some Italian bread in the blender to make crumbs. I added that to sauteed onions, fresh garlic, the ground beef, salt and some Parmesan cheese. I thought this apartment had more seasonings but later guests must have used up a bunch and not replaced them or something. I rolled out the meatballs and sauteed them over lower medium heat. Meanwhile I also cooked some sausages (which were not Italian style). When all of the meatballs were cooked (it took 2 batches for proper space in the pan) I added them to the sauce I had then strained for the skins and seeds by that point. I cut up the sausages then made garlic bread with more of the Italian bread we had in the oven.  By the time I was starting the garlic bread and the actual spaghetti I told them to come up and they brought up a bottle of wine.  Overall the food was reasonably good though I made too much pasta for the amount of sauce I got (I could have stretched it by not straining but I didn't want all the peels.  In a perfect world I would have had basil and oregano and black pepper at least (if not some crushed red pepper flakes too) but I did what I could.  All the time I was cooking I had 2 Barbarian Brewery 174 IPAs to keep the creative juices flowing.  We also finished up with dessert as vanilla ice cream and some coffee.  My mother-in-law showed up towards the end of dessert time and we gave her what we had left for food and she ate though there were more meatballs than anything and she left the last 2 behind.

They stayed for a while longer then Donna and Dianita headed to the office and Daniela and her mother stayed in the apartment to work on other things. I set up a tablet that should make it easy for her mother to use to communicate with Skype. We set up email addresses and everything else too. It is an old Surface RT tablet left in tablet mode (though it has the keyboard attachment too).  They continued to work for quite some time after I got all of this set up and Daniela started teaching her how to do things. I ended up doing some basic things. When my mother-in-law left Daniela still had a fair amount of work to do (we took too long eating) so I went to bed for the evening and she joined when she was done working.

I didn't take any pictures though I should have taken some of the food at least. My bad.

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