Eating Outside Home - A Countryside Soup

After my change of look, my husband and I decided to eat something outside home because we spent some hours buying all I need for my surgery. It is not easy to fing everything in one place, we have to travel to the next city which is bigger than my town, and it has more drug' s stores, clinics and health centres. When we end up doing everything we always feel very hungry, specially my husband.

We always go to Valencia city and return to my home in Guacara going through a town named Yagua which it used to be a town dedicated to farming and cattle raising. Nowdays there isn't much of these activities, but still you find some small restaurants selling Venezuelan typical food, and there are many places where you can buy the famous Cachapas which are a special bread made of fresh corn and cooked on a very hot metal plate.

These restaurants are usually very humble. They don't have any luxuries. They are made of tins, blocks and wooden logs, and sometimes they are constructed with any material they gather from garbage dumps, but for sure you will have shelter to protect yourself of getting wet if it rains. You will always see hens and cocks prowling the place and some street dogs waiting for someone to throw a bone.

The first thing you see are the Cachapas and a big black iron pan full of the soup being cooked on firewood. The people attending you don't wear an special uniform. They are friendly and give you a good service. You are invited to dring a lemonade made with cane sugar and full of ice which will calm your thirst. One thing I enjoy of this kind of place is the Venezuelan music they play on the radio and the smell of the firewood because it reminds me of my grandma farm.

The only thing I ate in this place is the beef rib soup, which is made with all kind of fresh vegetables, beef ribs, corns and it is served with cassava bread and lemons cut in halves to add to the soup. My husband ate the hall service. He asked for soup, lemonade and Cachapas with white cheese and garlic sausages The soup adquires some of the firewood smell. Venezuelans enjoy cooking on firewoods, specially in the countryside because there is no gas services.

Some of these soup's makers prepare them with the products of the land they own. They grow yucca, pumpkins, potatoes, chives, chillies etc, and they have their own hens and goats. They work very hard and since early hours in the morning you can smell the firewoods. We respect the lunch hour at 12 o' clock that is why they place the big pans on the firewoods very early in the morning to count with enough soup to sell.

They collect the corns to be used to prepare the Cachapas. Usually, the whole family work in these countryside restaurants. Some remove the leaves and others thresh the corn and the ladies prepare the mixture grinding the corn grains, add sugar and milk. Men cook the Cachapas, but sometimes you find only women doing the entire work. We were satisfied with the service and promised to come back with the family. We brought home some Cachapas, they were 15 Cachapas for 3$ and the soup costed 1$ each. It was cheap and delicious.

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