Not Your Mother's Pot Roast

It’s been a long week of school. Trying to learn a year’s worth of content plus student teaching in five weeks is tough. Having been out of the classroom for 35 years doesn’t lessen the difficulty any, either.

After 12 hours of working on ‘school’ I headed home to my ‘Eagles Nest’ at the El Mirador del Inka hostel. Two miles high, and then some, I cough and wheeze for enough oxygen to make it up the endless stone steps every time. I fell down on my bed to let the blood get back to my head, lungs, legs and brain.

I think it was about that time that I realized all I’d eaten that was a banana. Oxygen wasn’t the only great need in my life. Looking around my room, I didn’t see the makings of a meal. Nick and I woofed down all the good stuff last night while I was telling him how badly he’s going to miss my daughter.

Cusco is a good place to be hungry. Not only is food very affordable, if you know where to go it can also be exciting. Putting on my warmest clothes to go out into the fast chilling evening, I walked less than 200 meters to Nuna Machay. This Peruvian restaurant is located on a steep alley way in EV’s and my San Blas neighborhood of Cusco. The owner/chef, Jose, is a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu and trained at Ritz Carlton hotels in the U.S. He is from Lima and Virginia and speaks unaccented English and Spanish.

Nuna Machay takes up about an 20 by 30foot piece of real estate, two stories high. It has live music most nights of the week. There are a few tall bar stools and a few short ones downstairs with larger seats for dining up. When I walked in, Jose was behind the bar, in front of the stove and near his laptop which provides the music until the band arrives. “Hey Jose, what’s good tonight?”

he menu is whatever he has on hand and feels like cooking. Well, there is a menu in writing but I’ve only seen it once and it wasn’t what Jose was doing that night.

“I suggest the pot roast.”

(Pot Roast, are you kidding me? My mother made pot roast. Fatty meat and boiled vegetables; it was awful. I swore three decades ago I’d never eat Pot Roast again.)

“Really, tell me about it.”

Jose gave me a two minute explanation worthy of his alma mater. Since he didn’t give me another option, Pot Roast it was.

First I saw him fry up some rice til it was crispy and he seasoned it with something I couldn’t identify but smelled inviting. Jose made a béchamel-like sauce, sautéed some green beans, onions, red peppers, made a reduction of some beef broth and pulled two perfectly round tournedos of beef out of ‘the pot’. The dish arrived looking like a surrealist painting model. It was too pretty to disturb but the aroma was too delightful to stay away.

The beef was tender enough to cut with a fork and tasted nothing like that crap my mother made . It sat atop the rice and vegetables which were covered by the white sauce. The reduction sauce was artistically spread on the rounds of meat.

I was the only patron. Jose talked about Peruvian cuisine (he insists that Cusco has none), playing the proper music for maximum growth of American tomatoes and the restaurant demographics of San Blas. No Peruvians eat there.

My bill came to twenty soles. The bottle of beer I drank with dinner was half of the total. His masterpiece cost less than four bucks. The experience was like being in a friend’s kitchen. If your friend is Wolfgang Puck.

After dinner I went to a local ‘Tiende’ to buy a bottle of water and some shampoo, which cost more than dinner.

Adapting to Dry Climates

Settling into something of a routine in the last few days, I went to Maximo Nivel (my school) and was waiting at the door when it opened. Only the TEFL program, which I am in, is open now due to yet another Peruvian holiday. I've been here five days and they've had three festivals. Between the local Catholics churches (thousands) and indigenous overlap, there's reason for celebration more days than not.

One downside to festivals is that there are dogs in front of, behind and next to my living quarters. The bell ringing from the churches makes them bark in unision. It wears thin.

Due to the barking dogs, I no longer hold the rooster out back in such low esteem. Why anyone has a rooster in a big city I'm not sure, but he's guaranteed for 5:15 every morning. The bastard.

Oh, my story...after working for three hours on a preliminary lesson plan for a mini class I teach on Monday morning, I hiked home from school. E.V. says I won't keep doing that because it's too long and too steep. But, I arrived here with a big winter gut and it's just got to go; so I hike home at least once a day. E.V. is fancy. She takes a taxi.

The streets are really just alley ways built many hundreds of years before itsy bitsy Peruvian Taxi cabs. Cusco’s streets/alleys are all a mortared stone base. Some have flat stones near the sides and upturned small river rock inside that with a squared off 20" gutter in the center. The raised sidewalks range in width from 3' down so a few inches. When a llne of cabs comes up or down the alley, people hug the walls because a Cusco cabbie really doesn't give a shit if he hits your or not. It's tough to make a living and time is money. Nobody messes with them.

Right...ok, so it was sunny and warm at lunchtime. I was carrying a moderately heavy pack. Breakfast today was only a Tuna Fruit, which is part of a cactus. It's my new favorite food. But at 11,200 feet up and in a super dry climate the moisture in a tuna is inadequate to hydrate a large body. I forgot to drink water. Everyone tells you, "Senor, drink water. Or else you'll get a malo estomocho". Don't want that.

As I came through the triple security doors from the alley (a major street in the San Blas section of Cusco called Tanda Pata) one of the other people staying at El Mirador de las Inkas hostel saw me. "Hey Chris, join us for a glass of wine."

“Thanks, but I need to go change into something lighter, maybe later."

"Chris, you are the only person here who doesn't socialize. Sit down and join us for a glass of wine and some cheese. We don’t bite."

No way I wanted to sit with these people. They were all smoking. They complained about everything, and they're just plain dull. Otherwise I would have joined them before because when E.V. and Nick aren't around, I don't know anyone else in the neighborhood yet. I may be a loner but I’m no hermit.

The wine was bad but not awful. The cheese is nothing an American would recognize. Think cottage cheese squeezed really, really hard. Then add salt.

Half way into the glass of wine and after two chunks of cheese, I got the call.

Montezuma wasn't calling; he was instantly slapping the shit out of me. Barely had time to excuse myself and left my pack behind with my computer, camera, room key; everything. There are three stone staircases from the bottom patio area to my bathroom, which is an outdoor stair/ladder climb from my sleeping accommodations. I ran as fast as a fat old white guy is capable. Not the best idea, but not a lot of choices, either.

"Chris, what did we say.....sorry."

In Cusco there are some customs that don't relate to anything. The worst is that in most hostels and smaller hotels, you must provide you own toilet paper. There will be none waiting for you in el bano. Also, you are not allowed to put TP in the toilet. Primitive sewerage. It must be put in a trash receptacle nearby. Of course that means little if you have the world's worst trots. Time and speed count. TP is an afterthought.

I won't discuss here to what degree I made it in time or not. The semi-sleazy owner of El Mirador, Harry, was outside the bathroom as I flew in.

"Senor Jamalton, eez someting wrung?"

Guess there are some noises he's never heard. I may be with him there.

Thirty five to forty minutes later, I emerged. Short of breath, dizzy, nauseous and wondering what I'd done in life to deserve that. (I pulled the chair out from under a kid at a cub scout meeting in 1962, but that can't be it...).

Note to self. Drink water, lots of it. Don't succumb to wine related guilt trips. ALWAYS carry toilet paper everywhere.

I am still suffering the great emperor’s wrath, but I am a more worldly man for the experience.

My pack now has TP, a re-filled water bottle, and as soon as I feel confident enough to go to one of the small ‘tiendes’ up the alley, lots of Immodium.