Odds and Ends: Various Interesting Queries Leading to My Site

From time to time, I see interesting search terms that people used to find my site, and I try to provide the needed information, however belatedly, for which those folks were searching. Here are three random queries of note:

(1) “Village Empowerment Project” donation

Ah! Is this a query about HOW to donate? If so, please go to the website of the Village Empowerment Project and contact John Duffy, the Director of the program. He will let you know how to make a tax deductible donation to the Peru project. (And a worthy cause it is!) The project is run primarily through the generous donations of individuals. Talk about a big bang for the buck — about $200 buys a transceiver radio which can save dozens of lives in these rural outposts and about $300 buys a vaccine fridge that can protect hundreds of children from deadly diseases. Now that’s a bargain! 🙂

(2) Time of the day Peruvians eat breakfast

As in my post of two days ago, the answer is “depende.” Those who work in the fields or mines, eat breakfast according to the needs of their work schedule — early, undoubtedly. My impression is that they have a light breakfast of coffee and a roll before heading to work as early as 6 a.m. Then they take a longer break for lunch and enjoy a big meal (starting anywhere from noon to 3 or so and lasting at least an hour usually). We ate breakfast anywhere from 7 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and when we ate in restaurants, there were others around at that time, though never huge crowds. But maybe there are never huge crowds in restaurants in that part of Peru anyway…? I imagine most of the working poor, though, eat early.

(3) recipe for malfattis

I mentioned a while back that my Aunt D’Vern (Grandma’s sister) used to make malfattis and bring them to family gatherings, but I did not provide the recipe at that point. These are so delicious that I must share our recipe now. Not sure how many Weight Watchers points these are (though if I were making these while on the program, I would lighten up the ingredients with low-fat ricotta, etc.) I have trouble figuring points out sometimes because so much depends on the number of servings per recipe, and family recipes do not usually include that detail…. Anyway, here is D’Vern’s malfattis recipe (and, yes, it is Italian food and she was of Scandinavian heritage):

Mix:
1 pound of ricotta cheese
1 cup of french bread crumbs
1/2 cup of parmesan cheese, grated fine
2 eggs
1 package of frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed
1 clove of garlic, minced
black pepper to taste

Drop by spoonfuls onto about 3/4 cup flour on cookie sheet and shape into little finger size rolls. Boil in salted water until they float, then drain in colander. Arrange in alternate layers in baking pan with extra thick meaty spaghetti sauce. Bake for about an hour at 350 degress (F) to mix flavors.

Looks like a simple recipe, huh? The mixing is simple, but the rolling into finger-sized bits take a while. Delicious, though. Now I may just need to make this recipe!!

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On a side note, I hit a milestone of sorts for my blog this week. I have now had over 5,000 views of the site recorded since beginning on Sept 6. Not bad for a little experiment during my sabbatical. I am surprised by how much the blog has come to mean to me, though. And I suspect that I will be finding ways to use this technology when I return to teaching in Sept. of this year. Thanks to my readers for making this such a wonderful writing experience!