Food from South America to make at home with your family. Turn on the radio to a Spanish station, and have fun! Note that the recipes are ordered alphabetically by country.
VENEZUELA: Angel Falls is the highest uninterrupted waterfall in the world. Did you know that “Paradise Falls” in the movie Up was based on the real life Angel Falls? As the video below explains, the falls are known as Kerepakupai-Merú (or Parekupa Vena) amongst the Pemón-Carib people; the name means, “waterfall from the deepest place”. It would be amazing to visit, but its location is very remote and in the jungle, 600 kilometers (373 miles) away from civilization.
More specifically, the falls are located in Canaima National Park (Parque Nacional Canaima). This park is also famous because of its tepuis, which are sandstone plateaus in South America. In the Pemón language, tepui means, “house of the gods”. The literal translations below give you a glimpse into the language. As a linguist, I love this sort of thing!
Father Cesareo de Armellada was the author of the first dictionary of the Pemón language (published in 1943). At the time it was called Taurepan. Many words in this language show interesting patterns of formation.
For example, the word for “sugar-cane” is kaiwara-kún-imá , which means “pineapple with a very long leg.” The word for “pineapple” itself, kaiwara, means “a sweet with wrinkles.” The Pemon word for “dew” is chirké-yetakú, which means “star’s saliva.” Yetakú is “saliva” or, more precisely, “juice of the teeth.”
There is no word for “year” in the Pemon language. The day is divided into “dawning,” “morning,” “noontime,” “afternoon”.
In class, students made a model of Angel Falls in Venezuela, by collecting bark, small stones, and leaves outside, and adding water. (I had a sink in my room that year!) This mini project mostly came about because kindergarteners had learned that other classes were making Museum Exhibits, and they wanted to participate.
VENEZUELA: Heladería Coromoto in Merida, Venezuela, is home to 900 flavors of ice cream and a world record, at that! Have you ever been in a rut, and wanted to try something new, different, novel to get another perspective? Well, here is your chance! Try avocado ice cream with black beans; or trout ice cream; or perhaps spaghetti with cheese ice cream. Click HERE to learn more.
In class, students had fun dreaming up strange combinations of flavors, and even began ‘selling cones’ made out of colorful paper.
VENEZUELA: “For locals in the capital of Caracas, it is customary to strap on your roller skates and glide to Christmas mass. As legend has it, children go to bed with a piece of string tied round their toe and the other end dangling out of the window. As skaters roll past, they give the string a tug and children know that it’s time to, well, get their skates on” (source).
The streets are actually blockaded off each year so that families can roller-skate to Midnight Mass safely. People say this began as an alternative to sledding, since Venezuela is right on the equator and therefore quite warm in December. While I would not recommend roller-skating in the middle of the street in this country, you could go to a rink to skate!
VENEZUELA: Catatumbo Lightning is a naturally occurring phenomenon in Venezuela. Here, lightning strikes continuously above Lake Maracaibo for 140-160 nights per year (some sources say up to 300) for 10-12 hours straight each night. This can produce up to 40,000 strikes per night!
To learn more, read this article HERE!! Or, to make lightning in a bottle at home, try this experiment. Mystery History has some great photos HERE.
La cueva de español 