A Weekend Adventure

This weekend the girls of the youth group got together to make something called Pastel de Papas - or Potato Cakes. They were for a youth group fundraiser and while J and I did buy two - we should have bought like 5 they were so good. 

Now, I know what you are probably thinking...you made potato pancakes, but alas, these are not them. Here's a handy little step-by-step of what they are and how we made them. 

First make sure that you have handy little aluminum tins to put the potato cakes in (this was early morning Sunday) and that you've done some prep work - ie, chopped some onions, cooked some ground beef, and peeled and cooked a bunch of potatoes. We did most of these steps on Saturday.

Let everyone take a look at how to put everything together...this of course is after you've made a big batch of mashed potatoes with those cooked potatoes I mentioned before (potatoes/milk/butter) and some pino - which is a mix of cooked ground beef and onions, cumin and some aji (See below)

We were making about 45, hence the huge amount of everything

Spread a layer of mashed potatoes on the bottom of the tin

After the mashed potatoes, spread a layer of pino, then a sliced hard boiled egg, we had a nice little assembly line going for this part!

The girls working away...don't worry - I was helping, not just taking pictures

Finally, spread one last layer of mashed potatoes on top, sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on it if you feel like making it extra special, and bake for 20-30 minutes! Here are some of these lovely dishes pre-baking step.

Jordan and the youth pastor, Fernando, carrying the cakes to the church to sell.

We had a great time, they were delicious, and we sold all of them to raise some money for the youth group. All in all, a very sweet weekend adventure! 

Blessings,

Missy

Chilean Food 101

Thought you all might be interested in some of the food that they eat down here in Chile. Though it's not too different from anything you've eaten up there in the states..they definitely don't have a Mexican/Chinese/Thai/Italian restaurant on every corner (or even in every city) so in that sense, there isn't as big of a mix of food like we find in the melting pot of restaurants in the United States.

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They do, however, have a Pizza Hut at the mall in Concepcion...a place that I have been known to go every so often just to eat mozzarella cheese and taste something from home. Keep this one on the dl though will you? It isn't a pretty picture when I am face-full of carbo-loading goodness! :)

First thing on the docket is zapallo! (Since I already had this in my kitchen to take some pictures of). This is one of the staples of Chilean soups. Yes - Chileans make a lot of soup, and it is delicious! Usually they will put a bunch of things in their soups, from beans to potatoes to carrots and noodles, most things you probably put in your soups....

The one addition that they have hear is this beautiful squash that they chop into little squares of flavorful goodness. Now, you may be saying - Missy, I ALWAYS use squash in my soups, this isn't really a Chilean thing - then whoops, I guess I had just never had squash in my soup before arriving here and having it at nearly every lunch we go to!

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Anyway, back to zapallo...I looked up the name of this particular squash and it is called Crown Prince and they are HUGE! So, usually they are cut into big chunks and sold at the market for about 40 cents a chunk.

Here's a picture of the chunk I bought today:

Cut up for a soup:

And of course there is no picture of the soup because Jordan and I downed it like crazy people, it was soo good! And seriously, the added pop of the squash is fabulous!

So, now that you've had your first introduction to some Chilean food, I hope to continue this as a sort of series or something.

Have a great day,

Missy