November 20: Pumpkin Pie & Tamales

Pumpkin Pie Prep Lesson
Today was a bi-cultural foods day.  After school, Sophia and I went for a pie-making lesson.  Laura, our missionary friend from church, invited us to learn how to make fresh pumpkin pie out of a local squash that's available here.  It's their family tradition to make 5-6 pumpkin pies the week of American Thanksgiving and they eat them all within a couple of days!  We look forward to enjoying a piece on Thanksgiving too.

Sophia liked mashing the ayote sazón after it was boiled.

Rolling it out just like Grandma!

Look at those beautiful pie crusts - great job ladies!

 A Christmas tradition:  Tamales
Since Thanksgiving isn't celebrated here, there's plenty of Christmas traditions starting up already.  One of those is preparing tamales, a traditional Latin American food made of a corn-based dough that is stuffed with meats, cheeses, vegetables or fruits, then wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed or boiled. 

Church members on Sunday prepared hundreds of tamales with this assembly line of workers.  We bought a dozen of them to try - they sold them to raise money for local families

Warming them up for dinner tonight

Angelina's Adventure:

I didn't go to the pie making lesson because I got to skip school for the afternoon and go to the beach with my aunt and uncle. First, we left school and went home to eat lunch and get ready. Then, we caught a bus to Manuel Antonio. When we got off the bus we had to hike two kilometers to get to a small beach called Playa Biesanz. My aunt and uncle brought snorkeling stuff. While my dad and aunt stayed on the beach, my uncle and I went snorkeling. My uncle pulled me to the platform on my boogie board. I waited on the floating platform while my uncle went snorkeling and then on the way back I stuck my head in the water and saw three fish. The fish were blue at the bottom of their side and yellow with blue stripes on the top.

When we got back to shore, we had to walk a while more to get to the public beach.

We didn't stay long at the public beach. The whole time I was playing with a lab puppy. He NEVER got tired. We played fetch and played in the water for a little bit. I kept telling him "I wish you were MY puppy."

After the beach, we went back home and taught our neighbor's puppy how to sit and stay.