Day 125: Restaurant Musho

For those of you who were concerned that we hadn't yet found a place to eat, we've got good news! We decided last week that it wasn't going to be worth it to wait for Doña Elvina to return from her journey to Lima to cook for us, mostly because we were so tired and hungry by the end of summer school classes at 1pm every day. So we went looking around the community to try to convince someone that it would be worth it for them to cook for us and that our vegetarianism isn't really that big of a deal. Doña Natalia told us that she wanted to but was on her way to her son's house on the coast for a couple of months to help him roof a new property. But she offered to introduce us to another women, Doña Yola, who was the women who cooks for the men who work to rebuild Musho's Plaza de Armas. As it turns out she is also the woman who offers what is called a 'pension' (cooking service) to the teachers when school is in session. I am not clear how it is that noone mentioned her name during the past two months. :)

In any case, she was willing. After a number of questions about what kinds of food we could possibly eat as vegetarians, she agreed to let us come at give it a try. If we liked it we could eat with her. People in Musho seem to think that a 'vegetarian' diet must meant that we eat ENTIRELY differend foods, which is of course not the case. She kept saying things like, cheese?, beans?, rice?, potatoes?...each time more surprised that they were foods that we could eat.

We LOVED it! For our first lunch we were served an ear of corn, a big bowl of vegetable semola soup, and a heaping plate of rice and potatoes. The lunch also comes with a cool-aid type drink, and is always accompanied by a hot pepper salsa. And the best part is that all this food costs somewhere around .75 cents per lunch!