Szymon w Peru

At 19th of December we were celebrating a kind of Christmas Eve. Some trainees are leaving Peru and it was the last possibility to meet together. Everyone celebrates Chrismas differently in his coutry, so this dinner was definitely not a traditional one, however it was a good possibility to show a traditional food from our countries.

We were preparing our sophisticated dishes for hours. Some of us (me too) started already a day before, because on tuesday the oven was reserved for turkey.

I decided to prepare “Karpatka”, as it is easy to prepare, Polish and delicious. Unfortunately we don’t have an electric oven, and I had some problems baking my cake. Actually I did everything what you should not do while baking “Karpatka”. It should look like the Carpathian Mountains… but not this time. When I finished the cake it looked terribly flat, by the way it was very late at night. That’s why on tuesday, the day of a dinner, I went to sleep for a while before the dinner started.

When I woke up people already started to eat. I couldn’t belive my eyes. How? Without “opłatek” and wishes? It shouldn’t be just a dinner, so I immediately started to explain what is “opłatek”. Luckily I had one from Alinka, so I took it, gave everyone a piece and we started to wish. Everyone wished in public. It was impossible to share “opłatek” in everyone-to-everyone manner, because we had only one for 13 people, beside of that everyone was very hungry and we just wanted to eat as soon as possible. We were eating so fast that I didn’t have a time to make a picture of every dish.

Ok, now let’s have a look on our menu and cookers:

Colombia - Joe and Ximena - delicious dessert

Germany - Nils and Patrick - turkey and Glühwein

Mexico - Sandra, Ezequiel and his sister - something warm and the dessert

Belgium - Stephanie - Quische (I hope I write it correctly)

Romania - Cristina - dish basically made of eggs and bean

Norway - Thron - a cake, the receipe is a family secret

Poland - Olo - “ruskie pierogi”

the Philippines - Jenny - she prepared something too tasty, and it has finished before I made a picture

Poland - me - poor “karpatka”

We ended with a bit of “perro ravioso” (”wściekły pies”). Is it an ols traditional Polish custom? But is it a traditional Polish “Wigilia”?

Our team

PS. In future I will explain what does “Pipas” mean, as it has very complex meaning and is playing a significant role in our live in Lima.