For P, we decided to head down to South America to do Paraguay. Now I didn’t know that much about Paraguay and neither did any of my family. But, it is an interesting country. It has many immigrants from Europe, like Argentina, but it has retained it pre-colonial influence from the Guarani people in areas like its cuisine.

It is also one of the first countries to gain independence from Spain in 1810, though then and now it never has had access to the sea. It does however have the Paraguay river which is the country’s namesake.

We chose Paraguay because we hadn’t done a South American country in this round. Paraguay also seemed like a interesting country based on the information we had and it defiantly was. For more information go to Paraguay Slides.

Interesting Facts

• In Paraguay, Dueling is legal 
• Guarani is still an official language of Paraguay being one of the only Spanish speaking countries to retain its native language
• Paraguay has the biggest navy for being a landlocked country
• In the Triple Alliance war(1864-1870), Paraguay lost 7/8 of its men.

Cuisine

Paraguayan cuisine is delicious. It has influence from the Spanish, but uses lots of ingredients, like maize and pumpkin from it’s pre-colonial era. The food is very flavorful, though every dish has cheese in it (I’m not kidding) called Queso Paraguay which is 1/4 Parmesan and 3/4 Mozzarella cheese. I would definitely eat this again since everything was delicious, but it is probably isn’t what comes to mind as Latin American food.

Breakfast

Kiveve Recipe – This is basically a sweet pumpkin stew that is supposed to make you really energetic. It is very delicious and kind of looks like baby food.

Chipa Recipe – This is a bread made out of rice flour that is supposed to be eaten during Easter Holy week. It is kind of dry but was good when dipped in the kiveve.

Dinner

Sopa de Paraguaya Recipe – This is not a soup at all but a cheesy cornbread that was amazing and the national dish of Paraguay. We would definitely eat this again.

Bori-Bori Recipe – This is a delicious, very savory soup with cheesy dough balls inside. We loved it so much that we fought over who had the leftovers. This was also the first dish we cooked inside our new kitchen.

Culture

For the culture of Paraguay we decided to look at a really old lace pattern called Nanduti which can be found in many places in Paraguay. The name in Guarani translates to Spider’s web because the designs are so intricate and symmetrical.

It originates in the Spanish Canary islands where they used the sun as the design and it was called Teneriffe. When Spain took over South America the weaving migrated to Paraguay and instead of using the sun, they used flowers that were native to Paraguay. It is traditionally used for tablecloths though.

As the designs have to be very intricate, we did not weave the patterns but instead draw them on paper using flowers that can be found in our backyard like roses. An interesting fact about them is that they were sold by women to survive after the Triple alliance war devastated the population of Paraguay. For more information go to Nanduti Website.

For R (as Qatar was the only Q country) we are finally going back to Africa for R…