You Turkey You

Well I must say Christmas eve with the family was a blast.  Cuzco is crazy about fireworks.  After our group lit some off ourselves, we went up to the roof around midnight when things really went nuts.  In a municipal display the explosions and lights are all localized.  With this, they were coming from all sides, sustained for an hour.  I believe that having incendiaries zip by your head at close range better simulates the homage to war that our founding fathers intended with such festivities.  I haven’t really had that kind of child like adrenalin rush for that long in a while.  There were some parts of the Monarch trail on the downhill but they were brief and a focused solo experience. 

Of course my heart goes out to the handful of kids that lost fingers this year.  And to the kids that lost fingers last year and prompted the new law outlawing fireworks which seems to be unenforced.  There was a Dutch-Belgian student, girl at the dinner as well.  The chaos caused her to reflect on just how many regulations on life existed in Belgium vs. Peru.  I don’t think she concluded that one extreme was significantly better than the other which I mark as progress for a young liberal.

We talked a bunch of politics in English, which probably wasn’t so polite to the majority non-English speaking Peruanas at the table.  Her ideal was for solidarity in the world between the haves and have not’s.  It frustrates her that small differences in Belgium cause such large problems.  I tried to explain the difference in ease of making a decision and executing it yourself, making a decision for say a room full of Navidad revelers as to which fireworks to light when and executing, getting a consensus or even majority in a city to decide on something like how much tax increase can we afford to get the freaking trash off our streets, vs. entire countries pulling together. 

This brings us up to where she started which was why can’t Europe and Asia get it together to help Africa as though they were three people in a bar where the rich and middle class guy should buy a drink for the poor guy.  Not to say there aren’t huge benefits possible from a more integrated international policy.  But there are also grave dangers in the creation of such a large brother to look after things.  But my arguments were long winded and she seemed to always jump back to “but there are people really suffering out there” before I could make too much headway.

I cooked the turkey, and decided to make my signature garlic mashed potatoes with one of the thousands of unnamable local pata varieties.  And if you are going to do that, you have to make gravy (salsa carne) as well.  What I didn’t know was that all of this food was to be transported to grandma’s house for all the aunts and uncles and cousins.  Fortunately I have a huge ego so when there were some grumblings that I used an apple to moisten the turkey instead of making stuffing I took refuge in that multiple people said the turkey was very moist compared to previous dry years. 

I guess turkey for Christmas is a new phenomenon in Peru and this time they had an actual American to lead the way.  Time for the “USA, USA, USA” chant.  Of course, they could just be polite people that can’t believe Valery would abdicate cooking the thanksgiving dinner to a gringo but couldn’t bring themselves to complain too much.  It is always hard to tell.  The carving process was entertaining.  They offered the big knife to me, but where I come from the stranger in the house doesn’t cut the turkey, even if he cooked it.  So I passed it back and the eldest uncle set in.  He went horizontal to the spine whereas I usually go parallel.  He used another knife as a sort of hammer to get through the bone.  It was quiet entertaining.  And I must admit more efficient than the process I use.  Normally I am left with a carcass with lots of bits of meat around.  He essentially took the whole top off like the ragtop on a mustang.  We could have sat little Barbie dolls inside around my apple and drove the bottom half of the turkey around the living room like a toy when he was done.

I would say I am a well trained gringo at this point.  I made my signature apple pie, a semi-successful chocolate cake from a recipe in Spanish with a 6 year old for help.  (We weren’t really able to whip enough air into the egg to make the sort of chocolate angel food cake I believe the Spanish language recipe was looking for).  I am also on the hook to make a peach cobbler tomorrow.  After each meal, they say “Buen Probacho”.  You might expect it is similar to the Bon Appetite the French use before the meal.  But I get the impression Buen Probacho is closer to “I hope you don’t get diarrhea”.  So far I haven’t heard the ominous chorus of flushes after anything I have prepared so I think I am doing well.  “Gringito” they call me.  I think that means they have me well trained. 

New years eve, before I head out for the big fireworks chaos in the main plaza sin the rug rats.  Should be fun if I can keep the vomitar off me zapatas and the fuegos artificial, that they throw, out of the back of my jacket.