Love All Around

Valentine's Schmaletine's! Whether you're solo, together, or together but apart (who else is doing this crazy long distance thing?) I hope you celebrate loveliness everyday. Maybe that means something small or something bigger. My past few days were full of some pleasant little surprises. 

<3 Valetine's crafting with pre-k kiddies 
<3 red rose and a drawing from a darling girl
<3 Ladies night and dancin' to funky electronic DJ sets

<3 Skyping with my hubby
<3 catsitting two spastic furballs

<3 a bottle of wine
<3 Peanut butter cookies...(here)

<3 ...with no flour! (it only has 3 ingredients - peanut butter, sugar, and egg!)
<3 stumbling upon a great little Indian restaurant (a new favorite) in Oakland
<3 being offer a glass of wine by another table at the restaurant. I love friendly strangers!

Happy weekending to you all! Halfway through February, here we goooo!

Candy Cane Vanilla Cupcakes {+ Holiday Photos}

Happy belated Christmahanakwanzika! Whatever you celebrated (or didn't) I truly wish everyone lots of love and joy this season. I am so so happy to be able to be back visiting my family and seeing everyone. Being away just makes it that much more special and I am so grateful!

Now, if you didn't catch the holiday flash mob post from Tuesday Tunes, it's worth checking out...This post is two part = double the fun, right?! First I'll be sharing a fun holiday cupcake recipe I whipped up the other day with my mom. And then some photos from these past few days of festivities! Let's get bakin' ~

Christmas is all about the flavors of the season, wouldn't you agree? So we decided to make some vanilla cupcakes with a peppermint twist.

Here's what we used:
~ box of cupcake mix (we totally cheated - it's better if made from scratch!)
~ 1 tbsp red food die
~ 4 candy canes crushed up (use a mallet or hammer and candy canes in a bag)
~ vanilla icing
~ sprinkles, candies, etc. for decorating
(if you really want them to be peppermint-y, add a few drops of mint extract. I preferred having crushed peppermint on the icing though.)

First, make your cupcake batter. Then separate about 2 cups into another bowl. Add the red food dye and mix really well. 

Now fill your cupcake tins about 3/4 full with white batter. Add a dollop of pink batter in each, and carefully swirl around with a knife/toothpick/fork. Try not to mix it much because the idea is to create a marble effect.

If you'd like, add some crushed peppermint into the cups.

Bake for about 20 minutes at about 350*. Let cool for a bit so icing won't melt. Then it's time for decorating. Get creative and go crazy!

My mom pulled out all her cake-decorating supplies and showed me a few techniques. It takes some practice, but my wreath-decorated cupcake turned out cute. We looked at pictures of all the cakes she's made in the past 25 years. Which was at least 30 cakes! She was quite the cake-baker and decorator! We had fun making them together :) And they are quite perfect with the peppermint flakes on top. Super delicious sugar-y treats!

Pretty lovely, huh? And some of the holiday photos I've been snapping...

Recycled handcrafted wrapping by yours truly.

Ps. we have some musicians in the family!

Christmas morning at Gramma's.

3 generations :)

Tuesday Tunes #19 {Holiday Flash Mob}

Happy holidays guys! Just a little Tuesday Tunes for some added cheer!

Weekly Wishes #7

Hello USA! Early this morning I made it back to California (after a fun little stint of adventure on my layover in Mexico)! Saturday was nice because Rafa and I just hung out most of the day and evening, while I got everything together for my trip. I'm so thankful for that guy. 

Oh my, it's been quite some time since I've shared Weekly Wishes, Melyssa's awesomely motivational link-up! This week is kind of a big deal because of my reintegration here, the holidays, annnd a new job...holy moly!

My goals for this week:
Decorate and wrap some gifts. This is really today's goal, since there's like no time left! Going to get my DIY on and create some cute wrappings!
Activate my phone. Yes, my very old school Nokia is going to be back in action again soon - hopefully I'll have the same phone number!
Spend some good quality time with family. I'm really looking forward to this these days. With our family celebrations over the next week, I'm sure this will go well :)
Start a plan for my blog. For a long time now I've been thinking about how much more I'd like to put into this blog. I know it needs a big face-lift and I'm also thinking of switching over to Wordpress. I've been feeling guilty about not giving it the energy it deserves and don't want that anymore. This week I'm going to sit down, plan, investigate, etc. about blogging options. Any ideas or experiences with a big switch, I'd love to ask you!

Wishing you all a really sweet week with loved ones. Happy holidays!

Expat to Expat: My Holiday Celebrations Abroad

Happy holidays everyone! 

It's been so crazy over here, so I've been putting this bloggy on the back-burner a bit. I've been trying to do way too much these past few days and stressed myself out. So this is a good time to take a break from searching for apartments and do this awesome link-up by Belinda and Bailie! Woo, let's go ~

Has your idea of the holiday season changed since becoming an expat?
Yes and no. 
No, it hasn't changed in meaning. For me, the holidays are basically a time to be with loved ones and be grateful for what we have. It's always about that. Even the Christmas and Thanksgivings spent away from my family, I was in good company and that's what it's all about.
Yes, it has changed in what it looks like. For example, lights and trees aren't very common here, unless you are kind of rich. Since I'm living south of the equator, it's like summer! It's also different in that not EVERYthing is over-commercialized. I mean, there are places that do really go all out with decorations (full-size nativity scenes are popular here) but I don't see as much propaganda, which is refreshing. Oh, and another biggy is that holidays food looks different - the equivalent of egg nog, peppermint mochas, and cookies is a very thick hot chocolate and panetone. It's a fun tradition too.

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How do you build new holiday traditions, while keeping ones that remind you of “home”?
I will admit, I've gotten slightly lazier with holiday traditions here. But Thanksgiving has been an exception to that. The past 3 years my good expat friends in Cusco have gathered and carried out the good old stuff-your-face tradition, American style (this year, we even had a turkey and that was exciting for us).  

October 31st either celebrates Halloween (mostly younger kids) or the typical Peruvian celebration of folk music, Día de la canción criolla (which is common among the older generations). So last year for Halloween some friends had a party for Día de la canción criolla where we danced and listened to lots of traditional folk songs. But this past year, it kind of snuck up on us and I didn't have many ex-pat friends in Lima to celebrate Halloween...so my hubby and I just watched a movie together.

In general, it's nice to celebrate a little bit of the local culture and tie in things from home as well, when it's possible. I've enjoyed sharing with Rafa some of our traditions and trying to explain (and understand myself) American culture. It's all about creating a shared experience and recalling old memories.

With that, I'm looking forward to reading up on some posts from the link-up... Do you have a favorite holiday or tradition??

Hallow's Eve {pictures + puree}

Hey friends, happy Halloween!! I hope you like bad cheesy jokes, because I've got one. (If you're looking for Pumpkin Puree recipe, it's at the bottom of this post!)

What's it called when someone makes magically delicious sandwiches?

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Haha! Thanks to Jan for this photo from last winter...I knew it would come in handy ;) Anyway. I was very very excited to find pumpkins here in Peru this year! I'm pretty sure they don't grow here and the hubby had never seen one before. So we had some fun the other day...

Soon after this carving adventure and photo-shoot...I turned our pumpkin head into puree! I found this idea on one of my new favorite reads, The Crunchy Moose (original post). And little did I know, but it was super easy!

A little recipe:

I just added some chancaca (a pure form of sugar), a little olive oil, vanilla extract, and cinnamon to the sliced pumpkin pieces. Then popped in the oven for about an hour. Then I peeled off the skin and pureed the pieces. I was tempted to just use the cooked pumpkin to eat or add to a dessert - they are delicious just like that. Now it's waiting for me to turn it into a delicious creation, or maybe several because it made so much!

Happy hallow's eve to all!

Harvest festival in Peru: Huatia

Buenas tardes, dear readers.

So, who likes Thanksgiving?? It's one of my favorite holidays because it's all about food! In it's tradition, it's really about celebrating a harvest. It's fascinating to me to learn that most cultures around the world have a similar harvest festivals. For example, there's Sukkoh in Judaism (celebrated with fruit), the Yam Festival from Africa, Harvest Moon Festival from Korea, and lots lots more. 

In Peru, the harvest festival is called Huatia [wat-iya]. Living here for the past nearly 2 years I've been able to celebrate this twice! I love this tradition because first of all it's not about buying things or supporting the commercialization of holidays (*cough* Valentine's Day, Christmas *cough*). It's a natural celebration for the food that has been grown from the Earth. So this feels very organic and something that has been meaningful for thousands of years. And for this reason, it's a holiday for even people who live in poor areas or out in the country-side. That's actually where it comes from. 

So in the mountains of Peru, potatoes are one of the highest produced crops. During the months of May-July, Andean people celebrate the potato harvest. Huatia isn't just about harvesting the potatoes, it's about creating a natural oven to cook them. Over the past nearly two years living in Peru I was lucky enough to celebrate this twice. So below I'll be showing what the process is like. Since I was working at an afterschool program out in the countryside, we did this with the kids. They actually knew more about how to do it than most of the adults. 

First step was to collect some dried dirt clods. Then we started building them up in a U-shape.

The boys also showed off their building skills - very impressive!

And the girls got right in there too!

Next we lit the fire. It burned until the dirt clods were black. 

The black clods means that the fire it is hot enough to add potatoes and beans. Some people also cook meats, but it needs to be wrapped up.

Then it's time to collapse the hot dirt clods.

By burying this with loose dirt, the pile creates a hot insulated oven. All the holes with smoke coming out were covered.

During the cooking process you can take a break on the monkey bars for awhile :)

After about an hour, the food should be cooked. You have to be careful when finding the potatoes and beans in that hot pile! It's literally like 'hot potato'!

Keep undigging until the very last ones are out. 

Then it's time to eat! Everyone gets a few potatoes and can eat it with some different sauces. No washing, just peel off the dirt-y skin and enjoy! Now that's a natural flavor :)

So what do you think of this? Do you have any special food traditions?