Dispatches from Dreamland: Recuerdos, a Recipe, and a Request

Remember when I took that trip last month? Boy, I sure do, every day. Leaving my family behind was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but now that I'm home again, I find my thoughts keep flying over the continents and seas to the people who shared their homes with me, and the kids I came to love dearly.

How do we remember things? I could sigh nostalgically over a photo, or my computer screen. There's also the recounting to my husband the billionth tiny detail about daily life there, but the other senses remember things too.

It should come as no surprise that one of my favorite ways to get to Memory Lane is by eating. There were some great food-related memories from that trip (that didn't involve making pizza.) For example, during my next-to-last weekend in South America, a friend I met at the Fundación Niños de los Andes, who also happened to be a chef, took me to her family farm, where I experienced the most delicious celebration of summer: Chiles en Nogada.

 shown here without the Nogada sauce

It's a Mexican dish, but we were eating it in Colombia. And last week, we ate it here in Tillamook. After a night of soaking, a full day of chopping, and a backyard fire, I remembered that afternoon on that mountainside with my mouth.

Chiles en Nogada 

from Marcela Jaramillo Garcia

 chef, teacher, and co-owner of Pishqa and Öll Cocina Artesenal

15 ml. vegetable oil (to fry garlic, onions, tomato, almonds, olives and raisins)
4 cloves of garlic
1/4 c. red onion (finely chopped)
1 pinch sea salt
1/4 c. water
250 g. ripe tomatoes (chopped/liquified)
1/4 c. blanched almonds, halved
50 g. black raisins, chopped (dried cherries would be great here, for the raisin-haters)
8 green olives, cut into fourths
1 t. chopped fresh parsley
1 clove
1/4 cinnamon stick
 8 g. black pepper

15 g. vegetable oil (for frying the fruit)
1 c. diced apple
1 c. diced pear
1 c. diced peaches
1 T. brown sugar
1 c. diced bananas
8 poblano peppers

Nogada Sauce
1/4 c. almonds, peeled and soaked in water overnight
100 g. queso fresco
200 g. walnuts
180 ml. cold water

In large saucepan, heat the oil for frying the garlic, onions, tomato, almonds, olives and raisinsa. Start off by frying two crushed cloves of garlic until they're golden and translucent. Discard.
Add the onion and tomato and cook for a few minutes. Add the almonds, raisins, olives, and parsley. Cook for 2 minutes.
Grind the cloves, cinnamon, and pepper. Add them to the saucepan. Cook them for a minute more and remove the pan from the heat.

In another pan heat the oil for frying the fruit. Start off with two more cloves of crushed garlic, cooked and removed, then add the diced apple, pear and peach. Cover and cook for a few minutes. Add the brown sugar and banana before stirring the fruit mixture into the onion-tomato mixture. Now you have your pepper filling. It looked like this when I was ready to spoon it into the peppers.

To prepare the peppers:
Place whole peppers over direct heat (we used a fire in the backyard fire pit), until the skin is blistered and burned. Like, all-the-way, black-all-over burned. Place them into a sealable plastic bag, to make the peel sweat and easy to remove.

Wait at least fifteen minutes before taking them out and removing all of the blackened skin. After all the black is gone, make a long slit in the pepper, from stem to end, remove the seeds and pat insides dry with a paper towel. Put on a plate and spoon in the filling until full. Then, slather them with this sauce:

Nogada Sauce:
Mix almonds, cheese, and walnuts together in a food processor, using enough water to get a sauce consistency.

Fair Warning: While the dad of the house and I loved everything about Chiles en Nogada, the kids were freaked out by the mix of sweet and savory. You know what that means, I need to make it more often!

When I ate this bright burst of flavors in Colombia, I was on the side of  a steep green mountain, surrounded by fruit trees and tweeting birds. The lightness and balance of flavors is simple and sophisticated at the same time. And, when made with green peppers, it bears the colors of the Mexican flag: red, white, and green.

While I'm no chef, my own stab at stuffed peppers was close enough to make me remember and feel grateful for having had the opportunity to eat Mexican food with new friends in Colombia.

These new friends came into my life because of the heroic organization, Fundación Niños de los Andes, where I spent much of my June.

Last month while working on our Happy fan homage video, I took my camera to the Fundación and soon found myself with a long line of kids who wanted to be photographed: alone, together, in trees, with their boyfriends, and friends. Typical teen activity, no? But more so, because these kids don't have anyone else on the job. It's one thing to call some beloved daughter, taking her billionth bathroom selfie, self-absorbed. It's another thing to see a pretty young girl with her whole life ahead of her, wanting a memento of this fleeting moment, when she and the guy she loves are just figuring out what that even means. Maybe she knows she's beautiful, and maybe that's beautiful.

There's no scrapbook of firsts for this girl. No curl from a first haircut or chubby ink footprints on parchment. No proud mother horning in with a camera to make sure these moments will not be forgotten. It's up to her to capture the magic, and she's not taking the job lightly.

After taking photos of every student with every other student, one younger girl approached me, asking to borrow my camera. This sort of thing is not done, normally. One does not go to South America, visit a place where the kids have very little, and hand one of them your camera. But, I've never been much good at being normal. I handed her my sturdiest camera in an act of faith. She ran around the grounds, taking photos of buildings, animals, her friends, and herself. When I was about to leave, she returned it, anxious to know if she would ever see paper copies of the photos she just took. I promised her I would print them up when I was stateside, and mail them to her. Then, I looked at her photos.

This girl can shoot! 

 That's when I got an idea.

It was at around this point in my trip when I was already planning next year's visit to Manizales, Colombia, to do more work at Fundación Niños de los Andes. As I scrolled through my camera files, looking at the world through her little girl's eyes, I felt the sudden urge to return with a camera or two, teach these kids the basics of photography, and see what kind of art they make. Imagine a small group of camera-wielding kids walking around the grounds of the Fundación, learning and discovering this unique form of self-expression.

Brace yourself. Maybe take a deep breath. I'm about to do some online begging.

It's just that, this where you come in, O, benevolent reader.

I'd like you to send me your unused digital camera(s) if you have any.  If, in your upgrading ways, you happen to have a camera that works well, but probably won't get much more action; and if you have an urge in your heart to do something nice for someone you don't know, I'd love to take said camera to Colombia and give more niños the opportunity to take more fotos. If I get enough, (including chargers/cords/cards and other necessary equipment), I can get permission to teach a workshop with more than one student, develop a structured lesson plan, and complete projects which can be shared here and elsewhere online. So you'll see the memories you helped make.

To contribute your hand-me-down picture taking machine, or ask me for more details about this project before mailing your precious electronic devices to some stranger off the internet, send an email to www.thomaslaszlo11@gmail.com.

Gracias