Maracuya Curd

Today I decided to have lunch in the Northern Hemisphere. This took place in Pedernales, a nice stopping point between Canoa and Santo Domingo, where I returned to today. Although it was hard to leave, I had to do it eventually, so I boarded a northbound bus from Canoa this morning at about 10 for the 2 hour ride to Pedernales. We crossed the equator just before arriving. In Pedernales I had to change buses to get to Santo Domingo, and even though a bus was about to leave, I wanted lunch. I had a pretty decent meal of vegetable and cheese soup, a plate of rice and good chicken, and a maracuya juice for $1.50. When I was finished, the bus for Santo Domingo still hadn´t left...I guess this is an advantage of the slow process involved with any bus leaving any bus terminal. Usually the buses will wait for you!

I got to Santo Domingo at 4 o´clock, checked into the same hotel I stayed at last weekend, showered after the hot bus ride and now I´m at an internet place while drinking a strawberry yogurt smoothie. Tonight I am hopefully meeting up with friends for dinner and then tomorrow I am heading back to Riobamba...wish me luck in the cold.

Back to yesterday though....actually back to Friday....after posting the pictures in the blog entries for Canoa and Santo Domingo, I headed to the mercado central in Bahía and did some errands for Rika...I bought 3 grapefruits, 2 avocadoes and 6 maracuya (passion fruit) all for 1 dollar. Rika had asked me to get the grapefruit and avocado, but the Belgian girls and I had decided to buy the maracuya. Rika, who serves homemade lemon curd with all the breakfasts at Coco Loco, casually mentioned that it could be made with any acidic fruit...for example, maracuya. Leticia, who loves maracuya even more than me, jumped at this idea. Somehow we convinced Rika to give us a cooking lesson and teach us to make maracuya curd.

Yesterday, after lunch, we got our cooking class. I was sworn to secrecy regarding the exact recipe, but I can say that the curd came out delicious. For those of you back at home, hopefully I can make some curd for you guys to try. I think that we wouldn´t call it curd in the US....we´d probably call it custard. Like what´s inside a lemon merengue pie. To make the maracuya curd we still used some lemon as well, but the taste overall had a great maracuya flavor. We had it for breakfast this morning.

Last night was my last night in Canoa...as usual we had cocktails at happy hour at Bambú...and as usual they made me nice and tipsy. For some reason we didn´t get to play any drunken ping pong though...oh well. After some drinks and a beautiful sunset, we eventually headed to dinner at a place called Genesis, where I had encocado de camarón one last time....excellent.