Bolivian Meal

In 2007 I traveled to Bolivia with my brother and some other teens and young adults for a missions trip. It was such a neat time of getting to make friends in Bolivia, to serve at a youth retreat and at an orphanage. Upon our return, my brother sponsored a child from Bolivia, and since then our family members have added many kids from Bolivia! Eric and I sponsor and correspond with 5 kids from Bolivia and my sister has two. When I saw the recipes from Bolivia, I asked my sister if she wanted to help me make a Bolivian meal and she said she'd love to! So meet my sister Ruthie, without who's help I wouldn't have tackled two dishes.

For dinner, we made Quinoa P'Esque, and the recipe can be found on Compassion's Bolivia Rural High Plateau Region page.

When originally reading the recipe, I interpreted "peppers" as sweet peppers and so I was not prepared when I read "chilies" later in the instructions. So we made ours without chili peppers and instead added dried chili pepper to the pot. And since I had sweet peppers, we just diced them up with the onion and added it to the recipe.

The Quinoa P'Esque was delicious! The feta cheese offers a lot of flavor and the kids ate it all up for dinner! Since we doubled the recipe, it took a little while for the potatoes to cook, but other than that, it was relatively easy to make.

Then for dessert we made Bunñuelos from Compassion's Bolivia Valley Region page.

I couldn't find aniseed at the stores around here, so I substituted fennel seeds, which a number of websites said is a fine alternative. I'm sure the flavor was a little different, but it was still delicious!

Juanito really enjoyed helping cover the dough to let it rise! The recipe says to stretch the dough, but we made our food with gluten-free flour and so the dough wouldn't stretch, thus the strange shapes. And because we were out of syrup, I instead used powdered sugar on top.

These were so good! They tasted kind of like powdered sugar donuts and rose very nicely. My gluten-free family members had been trying to find a good recipe for donuts and this was a hit! My kids enjoyed them also. And I appreciated that they weren't super sweet.

Now I'm off to write to Franco, Maria, Jhomary, Daniela and Mary about our Bolivian meal night! I can't wait to hear what they think. If you have older kids and would like to get more involved, here are some ideas:

* Bolivian flag and country coloring page
* Individualized coloring page
* Learn Bolivian games: Tirar Frijoles & Lobo Lobito
* Time for Kids: Bolivia

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Previous Recipes
* Rice Pudding
* Pisang Goreng
* Baiao De Dois
* Arepa

About Hannah Hinojosa...Hannah is a long time Compassion sponsor and writes about her sponsorship journey at Because of Shamim. In addition to being a wife and mother, she is a part-time math professor and loves to read.