Clean Energy

Efficiency and Solar

Over the years we have promoted and helped to build chimneys on bio-fuel stoves. Otherwise kitchens can be horribly smokey. Some of our older beloveds have persistent coughs from years of smokey kitchens. Easier than making one from scratch are these ceramic two-burner stoves. Last year our supplier, an excelent solar store called ElectroSol, didn't seem to be able to keep them in stock. We wanted one for our goddaughter, Natalia and her husband, German, especially with their sweet new baby, Rolando. This year we bought one for them! Happy people!

Carrying the new stove on a bicycle taxi.

This year it looks like our main solar PV projects will be to repair or upgrade systems from past years that aren't working quite right. Here is Sam in the solar store with a new panel. We also got a battery and should be able to install them next week.

Sam shows off in the Solar store.

 Maybe pictures will be added with the installations when I'm back in Puno in a few weeks. Stay tuned!

Fun with Food

People ask us what we eat, so . . . 

Miqui, SOUP, Quechua noun;
     Miqui, EAT, Quechua verb.  

The most fundamental food the indigenous highlands of the Andes is a juicy vegetable soup based on potatoes. Together with herbal teas,  usually made from fresh local plants, such as the perennial mint, muña, provides liquid as well as nourishment. The soups are varied, with quinoa or pearled barley or crushed corn, usually thickened with squash known as sapaillo, sometimes containing freeze-dried potatoes known as chuño. The soup is always the first course, but often a secundo follows the soup. 

Enhanced by varied sources of ingredients which come from the Amazonian jungle, the oases in the coastal desert and the high altitude plains, Peru has become known for its creative cuisine. The traditions and creativity have spread throughout the country. This year we took pictures of especially yummy foods and attractive presentations. 

Market in Lima reveals the abundance.

On special occasions, such as with well-paying tourist guests, dinner is served on the fish-shaped platters. Ruperta is an excellent cook and this trout was poached in a mixture of ginger, onion and red bell peppers. Note the plate of coca leaves for the after-dinner tea on the upper left.

potatoes, trout, with rice in a fish-shaped platter 

Ruperta was always happy when Sam bought checking to bring home. Note the muña for after-dinner herbal tea in the upper right of the photo.

Chicken stew with rice, soup

fried trout and potatoes with beets, green beans, sweet potato

City treat is to take a group out for dinner at the broasted chicken restaurant. We can host eight to 10 people for the price of the two of us at a moderate restaurant in the U.S.

Yaquelin enjoys her first restaurant meal: Pollo a la Braza

In Spain and Peru (in contrast to Mexico), a tortilla is an egg scrambled with onion and tomatoes or other vegetables:

Soup, egg tortilla, beet salad & french fries.

One day I travelled to Puno alone on the early boat and went out for a treat of a meal by myself: Ceviche served with camote sweet potatoes and toasted corn.

Ceviche in a restaurant in Puno

Celbia's sheep broke his foot, so we ate it. 

Delfin and Clever butcher the sheep.

The result was a meal of roasted mutton with camote (sweet potatoes, new potatoes and rice, with rocoto (fresh salsa) on the side.

Thanks, sheep, for giving your life for our nutrition

Sometimes food is too yummy to take the picture before it is half eaten. These baby new potatoes with a beet salad was one of these times.

 beet/carrot/onion/lime juice salad

In Lima, food is more summery, salads instead of soup.

Lentils with sea fish served with avocado salad

Stuffed Avocado--chicken salad

For really special occasions on Taquile, I mix up some banana cake and bake it in the solar cooker. This was Eufrasia's birthday, Feliz Cumpleaño! Definitely not Andean traditional, but becoming a Tara and Sam tradition.

birthday banana/chocolate cake in the solar cooker  

Estufas Mejoradas

Clean burning wood cookstoves

We love solar cooking and promote it whenever we can, but the truth is that wood and twigs and dung  fuel will continue to be the primary means of cooking on Taquile. Lung irritation is common. I have sat in smoky kitchens where I had to hunch down to a meter above the floor level to breathe under the layer of smoke that filled the room. The answer is simple: Chimneys

Three meters of flexible galvanized metal will make two chimneys 2.5 meters high with a generous Chinese cap:

Yarn and a nail make an effective compass.

Fredy had a riveting tool that made assembling the chimney quick and, well, someone easy.

Silvano, Sam and Fredy with 2 chimneys and the ceramic base.

We purchased two of these ceramic foundations. It was difficult to find them with the chimney hole designed in.

lovely terra cotta

The stove is then finished with an air and ash metal floor.

We made the holes too small, darn.

First stove was installed in Grandma Josefa's kitchen where both Edith and Juana Luz are staying, going to school on Taquile while their parents build boats in Puno. This stove replaced the previous smoky stove where the walls and ceiling of the cooking alcove were covered with soot.

a very dirty smokey job

Second installation was for Asunta. Instead of installing it in the old sooty kitchen, they decided to make a new kitchen in a room that was already constructed. Asunta's father, Felipe, has taken a course in estufas mejoradas or better stoves and knows lots of details that we missed on Josefas's stove. In addition, building it in a new clean space was a pleasure.

Chimney installed; Felipe lays out the ceramic foundation

The mud layer closest to the fire is mixed with sifted dung for insulation.

finished with adobe

Final coat is smooth adobe. Armado finished the job with pride of ownership.

Tested when it was wet, small changes, and waited only one day to actually cook.