Salad – Nalena and Jon

Today I am sharing with you five little facts about Paraguayan food/meals:

1. Avocado is eaten as a fruit. Paraguayans like to sprinkle some sugar on top and eat it in its skin or in a smoothie with milk and sugar. This means they won’t eat it in a salad, or in their sandwich, or savor the all-time American favorite: guacamole. In fact, the day Jon and I made guacamole not one member of our host family tried it.

2. The preferred breakfast is white bread; there might be some dulce de leche or jam to spread on it. This means no eggs, no pancakes, no yogurt, no granola, no fruit, no cereal, no oatmeal, no French toast, none of it, just good old white bread. There is no need to get complicated so early in the morning, Paraguayans enjoy keeping things simple.

3. Red meat shall never be eaten with the slightest trace of blood. Once I showed Paraguayans images of how Americans like to eat their steak, they couldn’t believe what they were seeing and continuously shook their heads. Ironically, they love blood sausage, while Americans stay away from it.

Spinach Salad with Candied Walnuts and Honey Red Wine Vinaigrette

Oh my gosh, Becky, look at her…

Apologies, I currently have that song on constant repeat in my head.

Do you ever feel like something that should be relatively simple, very quickly becomes way too complicated. Especially when it has to do with the government. Ah, yes, my favorite, the government.

I think I’ve been reading The Hunger Games too much lately because that previous sentence made me scared that someone from the government would sense my sarcasm and come hunt me down.

By the way, The Hunger Games has had me in a drunken stupor for the past two weeks. I can not stop reading those darn books. It’s like crack. Actually, It’s more like when I read The Help. When I stayed up until 3am on a Thursday reading and then dragged myself into the office the next morning, barely able to keep my eyes open. Despite the droopy eyes, I may or may not have placed the book under my keyboard and just continued reading it for the rest of the day.