Here in Loma Bonita I am slowly learning all the day to day tasks of my host mom, Sra. Martina. On my first day here I got to witness her kill and prepare a chicken for the soup we had at lunch (see pictures below). Then she taught me how to peal oranges with a knife (no one peals fruit by hand here, you would get quite the stares if you tried). Finally she taught me how to de-shell the corn. Basically using a large mallet (see pictures below) you pound the corn until the outside shell comes off. It took Sra. Martina and I nearly 45 minutes of pounding to get the shells off. By the end I had mastered the one handed pounding, using the other hand to push the corn where you want it, then switch hands when tired and continue.
Once de-shelled we put the corn on a tray and had to shake off the shells. I was downright awful at this, thankfully Sra. Martina simply laughed at me when I sent corn flying haha. After 2 years I will master this skill. Corn, rice and coffee need to be de-shelled exactly the same way, so I will have plenty of opportunities to partake in this activity lol, plus it is a good arm workout J.
We next cooked the corn. Once cooked we ground it up (I do not have a photo of this, but it is exactly like what I did with my host parents in Los Mortales, you turn a crank over and over and over again). With the ground up corn we made tortilla (Sra. Martina cooked the giant tortilla on her fagon with banana leaves covering it, healthier than the also common frying) and we also made bollo. Bollo is not my favorite Panamanian food, but it’s not awful either, I’m slowly beginning to enjoy it more ha. Bollo is the ground corn, rolled into a long coil then wrapped in banana leaves and boiled. It is just very bland and the texture takes a little getting used to.
I also learned how to make patacones, plantains that are cut, fried, smashed, then fried again. Exceptionally unhealthy but exceptionally delicious. And I made chica de naranja (orange juice more or less), by using my new knife pealing skills to peal a passel of oranges, then squeezing them all into a jar, adding water and a type of honey. That was a pretty standard one haha. We also have been in the process of making chica de maiz, a heck of a lot of work quite frankly. First we set corn in a bag with water for a few days until the corn sprouted. Then we smashed it like we did the dry corn. Then we cooked it for a solid day. Then we ground it up. Now I believe we have to cook it again, not sure, we are finishing tomorrow.
A few days later I learned how to peal café. We spent about 3 hours on this process. First, just like what we did with the corn, we smashed the coffee beans (which had been out in the sun for a while to dry) with a mallet. We then took advantage of the wind, and picked up the beans and shells and dropped them back into the bucket, the wind blew away the shells and the cleaned beans fell back into the bucket. Then we shook the beans (still as bad as I was the first time trying to shake the corn). After they were de-shelled, we washed them and then put them in a huge pot over the fire. We then continually stirred them as they toasted. Once toasted we grinded it down to be made into coffee!
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