June 20, 2008
Friday
4:30PM
Our New Apartment
Living Room

Though we are now comfortably situated in our new apartment, there was a time not too long ago when we were living with an Ecuadorian family. During this time we became familiar with some new and different traditions and habits from a culture other than our own. For example, home remedies for mal aire, cow foot soup, and listening to static on the radio at full volume because sometimes there is music. Our last week living with our family we were introduced to yet another tradition. This tradition is not unique to our family nor do I think it is unique to our town. Every Father’s Day across the great province of Azuay, families gather to send a special treat to their fathers that are working abroad in the United States.

The story begins at 6:00am last Thursday. I got up and left our room to use the bathroom and immediately something struck me as odd. The clothes wires that are normally filled with heaps upon heaps of clothes were empty, except for our clothes. Immediately after this realization, I noticed large plumes of smoke coming from right below our room.

First, I checked to make sure the house wasn’t burning down, it wasn’t. Then, I ran around collecting our clothes from the wires before the smoke made the five hours of washing the previous days pointless. Finally, I went downstairs to ask why they had set up a grill (an oil drum cut in half with a grille set on top) directly below our room at 6:00 in the morning.

The answer: To grill 4 cuy (guinea pig)

The reason: To send to her sons in the States for Father’s Day

Of course, why else would a grill be set up before the sun comes up! The reason for the early set up, I later learned, was to allow time for the cuy to cool before they wrap them up in tin foil, stuff them into a black funda (a plastic grocery bag), and drop them off at a mail service with the address taped to the outside for a Saturday arrival in Long Island (FedEx has nothing on this).

I went back up to our room to report to Mike on the unique nature of this morning but before I could fully explain I noticed that our room now smelled heavily of smoke.

My Problem: Having to wash ALL of our clothes, sleeping bags, pillows, etc…

Mike’s Solution: Stuff everything (clothes, sleeping bags, pillows, etc…) into the armoire

So, into the armoire went everything we could shove in there in hopes that the armoire would serve as some sort of protective barrier against the impending cuy smoke. After smoke-proofing our room, Mike went to work and I spent the rest of the morning learning the ins and outs of grilling cuy. Below is advice I pass on to anyone interested in grilling a cuy.

1. Get a big stick roughly four feet long with a two inch diameter.

2. Shove the cuy backside first onto the stick until you can see the stick through the cuy mouth (this may be difficult as the mouth is stuffed with all sorts of flavorful yummies
i.e. a marinade of twenty herbs)

3. Grease up your cuy to make sure at the end you have super crispy skin.

4. Start grilling.

5. You must continually rotate the cuy to ensure even browning (or reddening, continue reading for explanation).

6. If the backside is stretched passed its elasticity (i.e. it rips open and the back half is hanging off), simply tie the cuy back together and continue as instructed above.

7. If the organs are hanging out, continue as though nothing is wrong.

8. Coat the cuy with achote oil, to give it that appetizing red color and unusual smell.

9. Stab the cuy a few times to make sure the skin doesn’t blister too much.

10. You know your cuy is done when you can open its mouth to extremely unnatural angles and no blood drips out.

11. Before packing your cuy to send you must snap off each of its four paws. If you do not do this those cute little feet will rip open the packaging during its trip (Luckily, the feet are the tastiest part so you will probably not forget to do this because you will want to eat the feet while you are still grilling…they are just so irresistible!).

Around 8:30 when the grilling was done and the cuy were set in a pot to cool (see picture), I learned that one of the cuy was for our own personal enjoyment. I don’t know how I managed it but I turned down the tasty, gamey looking hind leg I was offered under the pretense that it was too early in the morning for cuy (Who ever heard of such a thing as it being too early for cuy, gringas really are strange). I had already turned down a crispy little paw while we were grilling so I guess they weren’t too surprised but I still got a few odd looks, such is the life of a gringa in Ecuador.

Mike got back long after the cuyes had been sent off for the fathers living in the States but I documented the process well for his enjoyment and yours! Buen provecho and Happy Belated Father’s Day, sorry we didn’t send out cuyes but maybe next year…

Also, at the end of the slideshow you will find pictures of our brand new apartment (we promise it won´t be this messy after a few weeks) and a bucket of cuy. The bucket of cuy belongs to the Padre, or more appropriately the church. Instead of a bake sale, the church asks its members to donate a cleaned and seasoned cuy that will then be grilled and sold with the profits going to the church (each cuy will sell for about $12.00 and trust us every single cuy will sell). Maybe St. Gerturude´s of Bayville can do this next year in place of a bake sale. We´ll be home for Christmas if you need some help following the above grilling instructions.

The fiestas of San Pedro begin tomorrow so our next post will be full of fun and interesting San Pedro stories. It will also probably have lost of grammatical and spelling errors as we probably will not have slept at all during the week because our apartment is right on the plaza where the all night fiestas will take place. But do not worry, our apartment has its advantages as well. For example, tonight we will be having vegetable dahl with coconut quinoa while we watch Seinfeld DVDs. As you may be able to infer from the slideshow that is not what we ate when we were living with the family....we will miss those tasty cuy feet.



As always double-click for enlarged pictures and captions.