Pachamanca lunch --2/7/07

Today we went to a “Pachamanca” lunch at the nearby house of a friend of our academic director. “Pachamanca” literally means “earth bowl” in Quechua, and in practice it refers to a meal that is cooked over hot stones in a hole dug in the earth. As our friends removed the food from the steaming pit, we passed around a bottle of Cerveza Cuzqueña. We each had to pour a little into a glass, pour a bit onto the ground in an offering to the earth, drink it, and pour out the remaining foam. Traditionally I suppose “chicha” would have been used for this type of ceremony (a very strong beer made from maiz), but Cerveza Cuzqueña was more readily available. Then we sat down to eat—the delicious meal consisted of chicken, beef, a large green type of bean called “abas,” a special variety of corn with enormous kernels called “choclo” (I’ve been told that it has the largest kernels of any corn in the world), and three different varieties of potato. Yum.