Peru Week II: La Comida

Papa a la Huancaí­na de Carolina

Today, let's take a look at Peruvian cuisine, which has recently garnered worldwide acclaim. In 2004, the respected, albeit sometimes boring, magazine The Economist, said Peru "can lay claim to one of the world's dozen or so great cuisines."
While the most headline-grabbing dish, at least in the U.S., is cuy, or fried guinea pig, posh restaurants around globe are introducing people to ceviche, the only fish dish this registered picky eater will eat.
But Peruvian food is so much more.
With 2,000 varieties of potatoes (not including 2,016 types of sweet potatoes), 25 types of corn, 2,000 species of fish (more than any other country in the world), and 28 of the 32 world climates, there's an unbelievable range of dishes in Peru, with each region home to distinct staples. And much of it is not exotic to North American palates. There's a plethora of chicken, steak, rice and potatoes on the menu.
There's also a wide range of ethnic influences, including Spanish, African, Chinese and indigenous.
The increasing popularity in Peruvian food is evident by the number of Peruvian restaurants popping up around the country. And it's not just in big cities. Even my little Greenville has a good one, Pisco Sour.

The best blog online about Peruvian food is at perufood.blogspot.com. Go there and enjoy.

If you want to see the exotic side of Peruvian food, watch all five parts of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" on Youtube. Here's the first:

Cuy photo above by Alejandra the Great

Happy Independence Day

Feliz 28, mi gente!
Today is Peruvian Independence Day, the day we recognize the anniversary of José de San Martín's declaration of independence from Spain in 1821.
We celebrated yesterday by eating and drinking, and dressing up our daughter in her Marinera outfit.
We're kicking off Peruvian Culture Week at Can You Dig It? with info on the Marinera, the national dance of Peru.
A guy named Mitch did a very cool documentary, Soy Andina, which "tells the intersecting stories of two New Yorkers – a modern/hip-hop dance dancer raised in Queens, and a folkloric dancer from the Andes – on a dazzling odyssey through Peru in search of roots and a world of folkloric dance."
Visit his site here and watch this clip:

New Music Week

As a youngster, I had relatively unique musical tastes compared to my peers growing up in rural Iowa. Much of this was due to the powerful influence of Prince, Terrence Trent D'Arby and Michael Jackson. Out of the pretty diverse world of 80s pop music (can you imagine Culture Club having No. 1 hits today?), my attraction to these artists naturally led me to their influences -- Little Richard, Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke and James Brown -- which in turn, opened the doors to the entire world of black music.
This was not an easy door to open amid the rolling corn fields. There were no black radio stations in our market, the mall and its corporate music stores were 30 minutes away, and there was no internet or i-Tunes to help in the discovery process.
Instead, I had an older brother who went to college in Mississippi. He came back after his freshman year with a mixtape labeled "Funky Shit" that changed my life. It had all the latest jams, a mix of rap and R&B that I would later come to know as "New Jack Swing."
I gobbled it up, rented House Party from the one Blockbuster in a 90-mile radius, learned Kid 'n' Play's dance moves and bought a shimmery black and gold British Knights hat that I was afraid to wear in public.
I got into Bobby Brown, studied the liner notes inside his cassette, and saw that a man named Teddy Riley was responsible for all the best songs. His name kept popping up in the credits for all the music I liked then, and then I discovered Riley's own group, Guy.
After moving to Indiana, my love for this music continued into the early years of high school with all the New Edition solo acts, especially Bell Biv DeVoe and Ralph Tresvant, and later Boyz II Men and Jodeci.
Cabbage Patch and Running Man 20 years into the future, my brother's "Funky Shit" tape is gone, but Hip-O records has just released a new compilation, "New Jack Swing: Gold," a collection of some my long-forgotten jams.
It was fun to listen to the first couple of times, and I got a little teary-eyed when my little Sofia started bobbing her head to the extended version of Keith Sweat's "I Want Her," but then I was struck by just how much these songs sound the same. Mr. Riley found his hit-making groove and stuck with it for a period of a couple of years. You can't blame him for that, but it gets stretched a little thin over a two disc compilation. He did switch it up in the mid-1990s with his new group, Blackstreet, which thankfully gave the world "No Diggity" before disbanding.
The problem with the "Gold" collection is that it's song selection misses the mark here and there. The great Tony Toni Tone song "Feels Good" is out of place here. I would have replaced it with Redhead Kingpin's "Do the Right Thing." Wouldn't you?

New Music Week

Tanya Morgan
Rising independent hip-hop stars and friends of Can You Dig It? are back with an excellent new, nine-track EP, "The Bridge."
Although the production and recording seems more raw than their debut full-length, "Moonlighting," rappers Donwill, Von Pea and Illyas display a dedication to their lyrical artistry. There's enough clever wordplay and references to keep faithful listeners entertained for repeated listenings.
Check out the opening title track below and support the real deal by buying the rest through your favorite online retailer.

New Music Week

Al Green
The Reverend Al Green is 62 years old and his new album, "Lay It Down," is better than any other soul record released this year.
Produced by youngster musicologists Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson of The Roots and James Poyser, partners in progressive soul project The Randy Watson Experience, "Lay It Down" captures the essence of Green's classic sound and builds on it, while avoiding the trap of overtly copying his legendary 1970s recordings.
The album includes duets with the best of today's R&B/soul artists, John Legend ("Stay With Me"), Corinne Bailey Rae ("Take Your Time") and Anthony Hamilton ("You've Got the Love I Need"). But the behind-the-scenes star of the record is the late Chalmers "Spanky" Alford, whose distinctive guitar work makes a good album great.

New Music Week

I've been on a music binge lately and have been lucky to score some great new CDs. What's better than feeding your addiction while all curled up alone in a pool of your own drool on the kitchen floor? Peer pressuring your friends to try it with you, of course.
Here's the first entry:
Grupo Fantasma
We were lucky enough to see this group, umm... grupo, playing for free in downtown Greenville in the spring of 2007. Unbeknownst to me, they were fresh off a gig in Miami playing Super Bowl parties with my musical hero, Prince. That tidbit piqued my interest, so I immediately went home to find out everything I could about Grupo Fantasma and file that information somewhere in my brain alongside useless factoids about Jill Jones, The Family and Mazarati.
Number one, they're not from Minneapolis. They're from Austin, Texas, and play latin music -- in all its varied forms -- with a heavy head-bobbing nod to funk bands like War, Earth Wind and Fire, and Señor James Brown El Rey.
Their newest album, Sonidos Gold, was released in June and it's the best latin album I've heard in a long time.
Whereas the monotony of some latin dance music (merengue especially) leaves me bored by the third song of an album (Sorry, Elvis Crespo), Sonidos Gold keeps your attention from start to finish.
I've included three songs below to demonstrate that point. The first track, "Arroz Con Frijoles," showcases their latin roots. The second song, "Cumbia de Los Pajaritos, is a cumbia (duh) reminiscent of the hot, new old chicha sounds out of my beloved Peru. The third is funk-funk-funk with saxophone by the legendary Maceo Parker (James Brown, Parliament-Funkadelic, Prince).
Press play and disfruten!

Stay at home, Dad

I’ve long admired and envied women who can stay home with their kids. It’s such an important job and if you’re willing and able to make the financial and professional sacrifices necessary to do it, it’s got to be the greatest thing in the world for you and your children.
What I’ve never respected are the women who go overboard in trying to convince the rest of the working world how difficult it is. As I slogged through days in Corporate America wondering if what I was doing 40-55 hours a week was worth anything more than the paycheck it provided to feed and shelter my family, I dreamed of trading places with these moms.
Now, thanks to a corporate buyout and the ensuing layoff, I have that chance.
I read once that if stay at home moms were paid for their services, they’d earn something like $150,000 a year. Granted, I’m not knitting the whole family matching sweaters for our Christmas card beach portrait or fashioning homemade Halloween costumes out of recycled plastics and terrycloth, but $150,000 is ridiculous.
I was at Marshalls recently and saw these two stay-at-home moms making some returns with their two kids. One of them was trying to return a rug she had obviously used, possibly during the rainy season in the Mississippi Delta.
“We tried it, but just didn’t like it,” she told the Marshalls guy. He said he needed a receipt. She dug through a novella-sized packet of fresh store receipts before landing on the right one. Marshalls took the rug back, then Mom said to the already bored 5-year-olds, “Hey, Savannah-Dylan and Connor, you want to go look at those lamps?”
I wonder how much that errand was worth on the mom salary calculator?
The first and only con of staying at home is that you don’t get paid. For most people it’s a huge sacrifice, but if you’re rich or don’t mind sleeping in your hatchback, it’s not a problem.
The first day home with my Sofia was a little bit unnerving, but having a schedule is the key to surviving a full day alone with a precious 20-month-old daughter whose vocabulary consists of “No,” “Mine” and “Back off, Father.”
The schedule is great because when you know what and when you’re supposed to do something, it takes the guesswork out of how to fill your day. For example, our Mondays start with a trip to the liquor store at about 10:30 am. It’s the best time to go because we can get our shopping done for the week and still get through the lunch buffet line at the gentlemen’s club before all the highchairs are taken and the lovely Montana Leatheridge hits the stage for her show-stopping tribute to Def Leppard. Who needs Kindermusik?
I’ve learned multi-tasking is another important skill for stay-at-home parenting. Young children like it when they push buttons that make loud noises. Why not let them mix the margaritas?
Getting the housework done is a challenge. Her little hands are just so small. That’s a plus when it comes time to dust the knick-knacks I’ve been buying up at Hobby Lobby, but it takes her forever to wash the car.Sofia does like to play the “Swiffer Game,” which is cool, because by the time I’m up from my nap, portions of the floors are squeaky clean.
I’m ashamed to admit that up until a few weeks ago, you could probably count on two manly, but soft and moisturized hands the number of times I’ve made dinner for my wife during our nearly 10 years together. That’s embarrassing. The only excuse is that she’s a far superior cook, she enjoys it and I’m lazy.
This has changed since I’ve been home. The other night, I made a real dinner that required ingredients, not just poking three to four holes in plastic and microwaving. And one of those ingredients was fish sauce. Fish sauce!
Cooking definitely has presented the biggest challenges so far. Maybe more experienced parents could tell me what you do when you’re in the middle of browning the sausage and the child sloshes into the kitchen fully loaded with contraband cargo. I chose the sausage.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I haven’t been doing this for very long yet, and I hope I don’t have to. It’s not that I wouldn’t want to continue to stay at home, we just need the money to maintain our jet-setting lifestyle and pay for our diamond-crusted toilet paper.
Still, no matter what job I end up finding, it never, ever will be as gratifying as the one I’m doing now. They can keep their $150,000.

Wall-E & Wale

Believe the hype: Wall-E is a great movie. You've probably already read glowing reviews with the requisite references to Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin meets Stanley Kubrick, so I won't pile on another one. I will say those references -- however repetitious -- are completely justified.

Besides being funny, sweet, scary and sad, it's an effective indictment of our throw-away culture of convenience. It's commendable that Pixar and Disney, two giant culture makers, made such a film.

And on top of all that, the animation is mouth-dropping. Even on a tiny, concessions-stained screen in Podunk, Georgia.

Watch some trailers here.

At the box office of the same Podunk, Georgia, theater, I mistakenly asked for two tickets to see Wale (Wall-Lay), not a movie, but a much buzzed about rapper from D.C. He recently released a free downloadable mixtape of songs centered around Seinfeld called "The Mixtape About Nothing." On the opener, Wale raps over a funkified version of the Seinfeld theme song, making his own cultural observations using Jerry Seinfeld's patented "What's the deal with..." phrase.

There's also a track (file?) called the The Kramer (guess what that's about) and a shoutout from Julia Louis-Dreyfuss.

Download and listen to it here.