Carousing with the Carranza Cousins

Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Chorrillos, Lima, Peru
Today we had lunch with some of his Carranza Cousins - cousins from his mother's side. They took us to the Regatas Club for lunch - one of the nicest private clubs in Lima. We had a great visit, caught up on old times and new news, and ate great food.





Here are the cousins in the photo on the left - Ingrid, Lida, Edith, Tete, Armando, Olga, me and Tato (Olga is Tato's wife).

That's all we did today, so I will talk about food, since we ate some interesting things. For breakfast I had a mango - YUM I LOVE mangos, even though they are so messy to eat. And I also had a grenadilla. I discovered these fruits when we traveled in Mexico several times. The outside looks sort of like an orange, but it's hard, almost like cracking into an egg, and inside are these seeds coated with this semisweet mucus like stuff. In Mexico we named it snot fruit. Okay, maybe not so appetizing, but really it is good.

 

For lunch at the Regatas, we had an appetizer that looked like an egg roll but wasn't - you ate it with mashed avocado. Then two kinds of ceviche, the standard kind and another kind without onions and in sort of a sauce. I don't know which was better - they were both wonderful. Then I had anticuchos pescos - chunks of fish on a skewer and grilled, with sweet potato and corn. I wish I had taken photos - sorry. Armando had shrimp and rice which was really good too, and we had a desert made from chirimoya - another fruit you probably never heard of. It was the consistency of cheesecake but no cheese, just some chunks of fruit. There is a chirimoya in our refrigerator right now so I will report on it later.


After we got back from lunch at 5:00 p.m. Armando took a nap because he's got a head cold and decided he needed some rest. I wrote blog entries. About 7:00 we decided to go walk, so we walked to Larcomar - a big shopping center at the end of our street by the ocean. More about that another day. Then on the way back we stopped at a little hole in the wall to have anticuchos de corazon with potatoes and corn - we shared an order and a beer and it was perfect. Anticuchos are beef heart chunks, marinated in lemon juice, vinegar, garlic and cumin and grilled on a skewer. Okay I know some of you are turning up your noses, thinking you would never eat heart. But it's not like eating liver or kidneys - remember heart is a muscle just like other meat you eat, so the texture is pretty much the same. It is one of my most favorite foods. 





 










 

 I also took a close up of the corn - Peruvian corn is different from what we have. The first time I saw it, with those huge kernals, I thought it would be like feed corn and would be tough and stick to my teeth, but no, it is tender and tasty.
   













 

 Finally we walked back to Parque Kennedy aka Parque de los Gatos. Every day from about 4 p.m. until 10 or 11 there are vendors in the park. Part craft vendors, part souvenier vendors and part flea market - they come every day. And of course I had to get my cat fix. It was feeding time, and this sweet little kitty wanted some attention from me. Or maybe it was me that wanted the attention. I forget.

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Comments

Gonzalo Caso Dagnino
2014-09-11

Very nice... keep on writing...
I don't read anything about you guys going to the 'Haiti'. That's a must!!! - Right on Parque de los Gatos...

2025-02-08

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