More Food

Here are a few of the best, worst, and most interesting Bolivian foods I've tried so far:

Chuño

In both of these pictures, the dark brownish things that look like chunks of meat are actually pieces of chuño - freeze-dried potatoes.  Chuño has been made for hundreds of years in the mountains of Bolivia and Peru by letting potatoes sit outside in freezing temperatures at night and then putting them in the sun during the day.  It's a good way to preserve potatoes until you want to boil them in a soup or stew.  It doesn't taste at all like a potato - it's more like eating a slightly nutty sponge.  It's not terrible, but I don't think I'll be missing it.

Salteñas

These are pictures of a salteña - a popular mid-morning breakfast snack here, sold on probably every street corner in the city from about 8:00 AM to whenever they run out.  Salteñas are kind of like soupy empanadas - dough wrapped around a meat, onion, and vegetable stew.  The crust is just a little bit sweet, and the inside is probably the most flavorful thing I've had here.  This is the first meat dish I've really liked here - which means for regular meat-eaters, it's probably even more amazing.

Lagua...maybe?

We had this soup at the orphanage yesterday.  No one was quite sure what it was.  It was some kind of grain-based soup...Imagine a grayish, bitter, watery bowl of cream of wheat with some potatoes in it.  I'm pretty sure this is the gruel they give the orphans in Charles Dickens books.

Cuernos de Queso

I saw this for sale in the bakery section of the grocery store and had to try it - it's name means "cheese horns."  It turns out, it's a slightly sweet bread (in the shape of horns) filled with a little tangy cheese. It was like a starchy version of an empanada, and was pretty tasty.

Pastel de avena

This was by far the weirdest food we've had at the orphanage so far (even the Bolivians who work there thought it was odd).  It's not typical food at all - it was invented by our cook to use a bunch of oatmeal that we had.  It was basically oatmeal lasagna.  It had a thick bottom and top layer of oatmeal, with a filling of marinara sauce and vegetables.  The parts on their own were good, but it was very weird to be eating them together.