KimmyKokonut

Hard at work. I was honored to spend a month in the Sacred Valley of Peru (near Machu Picchu), where I volunteered for a group yoga retreat center, teaching the staff vegan cooking and vegetarian classics (all in Spanish!). The kitchen was lacto-ovo vegetarian and the owner wanted them to have some vegan recipes under […]

A friend asked us in our last days in Peru what we were looking forward to, food-wise. Matt’s answer was cheddar cheese. I couldn’t think of anything off the top of my head and it drove my crazy. I guess I just spent too much time in markets and cooking and focusing on what they […]

After 3 months of eating in Peru (and shocked at how much white rice is consumed, I think more so than the revered potatoes) and finally having a somewhat enjoyable kitchen to cook in, I decided it was time to play around and make my biggest meal craving, Swimming Rama. My prior shared kitchen experiences […]

Prompted by a reader’s question, I thought it would be nice to post a list of veggie places in Lima in an organized manner. We were in Lima for only a few days, mostly following the Lonely Planet guide or happycow.net, but we found a few that aren’t listed and I would like to share […]

Another beverage that I’ve been enjoying in Peru is called emoliente. You can find this in any town, whether in a little mountain village or the big city of Lima. Vendors congregate in the streets at dawn and dusk in plazas or by bus stops with their rolling carts of unlabeled glass bottles of colorful […]

I am not a big beverage drinker in general since I kicked my addiction to orange juice. My husband and I were going through the family size jug at least once a week. It was delicious and thirst quenching but dangerous for the pancreas since it was such a concentrated sugar rush without the fiber […]

I don’t really appreciate how nice it is to have your very own kitchen and a well-stocked pantry until I am in a foreign country with an empty kitchen and very little inspiration to cook. I smuggled “Vegan with a Vengeance” with me to Peru, hoping it would provide some sort of light in a […]

I haven’t been carrying my camera everywhere, so you’ll have to excuse the lack of photos of food when we’ve eaten out. But here are a few photos of some of our home-cooked meals, in an unfamiliar kitchen with a hovering hostess…making the process of cooking less than ideal. Breakfast at first (when it was […]

Hopefully everyone knows by now how important it is to buy food and products produced locally. If not, check out this website for a more detailed answer. Overall, it’s better for the environment (fossil fuels used in travelling, more preservatives for shelf life), your health (fresher products contain more nutrients) and supporting your local economy […]

A new food discovery that I have made while in Peru is Hierba luisa, a grass-like plant that tends to grow easily on the coast of Northern Peru. I bought a box of Hierba luisa tea at the market because I didn’t know what it was and I wanted to try it. It has a […]