Spiders and veggies

One night, Amy gasped her, "I see a crazy bug" gasp (which, by the way, is increasingly rare), and pointed to the corner. Here is the spider, pre-smash. It was huge, and when I grabbed a shoe to smash it, I had the distinct impression that because of its large size I was killing an animal rather than a bug, and wondered if one hit would really do the job. Nonetheless, it did. We were a bit freaked out, and went over and told Carlos about the huge spider we just found. He replied that, yes, the tarantulas sometimes come out when it rains, and often get much bigger than that one. Nice. 

















Here is the famous tomate de árbol, or tree tomato. We mostly use it to make ají, or the local hot sauce. It is a kind of fruit. To make ají, you blend it together with hot pepers, salt, lime and cilantro. Extremely tasty and helps with some of the blander meals. It can also be used to make juice, just add sugar. 












We eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, which complement the potatoes, rice and beans that are the staple foods here. Apart from the first few months of getting used to the new bugs and sicknesses, a lot of the times we feel much more healthy here than we do in the US, due in large part to our simple, healthy diet. A huge bag of groceries runs us about $5. Pretty good. We eat chicken maybe once a week, and some canned tuna once a week as well.



This is the local stand where we usually buy our groceries. The owner is a friend of Susana´s from church, and they give us good prices and usually something extra at the end (called, in Kichwa, "yapa"). Susana here is getting some veggies with Anahi, the youngest in the family. We regularly buy brocoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, tree tomatoes, beets, cole, limes (for the salads), cucumbers, carrots, radishes, yellow and green platanos, papaya, yuca, sweet potatoes, blackberries, naranjilla, green beans, etc. We really love all the fresh vegetables.