Cost Per Serving: Peru Edition!

It’s a super special edition of Cost Per Serving today.  It’s a dish we assembled during our trip in Peru! So before you read about the whole trip next week, you can “whet your appetite” with this tale of tastes.

Chinchero is a beautiful little Peruvian town, so far not ruined by tourism, at the leg-wobbling elevation of 12,500 feet, located in between Cusco and Urubamba. We took a day trip from Cusco to Chinchero on a Sunday to see the famous Chinchero market. There are market days throughout the week, but Sunday is their big day when you can buy a little bit of everything: Clothing, textiles, handicrafts, and lots of food.

I was mostly interested in going to see the local women. I think the women of the Andes are the best-dressed people in the world. They all wear hats, skirts and aren’t afraid of color and patterns. The hats are some kind of holdover from the 1950s, when these businesswomen would wear them to work at the market. Imagine if men wearing hats with suits never went out of style in America. That’s basically what happened in the Andes.

We ended up buying a few scarves from the ladies in traditional dress you see in the photo. And we bought produce as well! The tomatoes looked good, so we bought a few, and ate them like apples.  Believe me when I say these were the best tomatoes I’ve had in a long, long time. Red all the way through and delicious. Unless you get your tomatoes from a local farm, I find the tomatoes you get in stores to always be white, tasteless, mealy, or some combination of those. And best of all? It cost one sole for 3 tomatoes. One sole is about 33 cents, making each tomato about 11 cents!

What!

We decided to buy some more delicious produce despite not having access to any cooking facilities. Aside from the tomatoes, at the market you could buy a giant avocado for one sole (33 cents) or three limes for the same. So we came back to Cusco with the haul below, and bought an unidentifiable spice packet at store in Cusco.

Chinchero veggies plus offensive spice packet

Ingredient Cost Size of Package Cost Per Unit Amount Used Cost Per Recipe
 Avocado $0.33  1 avocado $ 0.33  1 avocado  $0.33
 Tomatoes $0.33 3 tomatoes  $0.11 2 tomatoes $0.22
 Lime $0.33 3 limes $0.11 1 lime $0.11
Seasoning  $0.15  ? a little bit $0.02
 Total  $0.68
Servings 2
Cost Per Serving $0.34

At our inn’s breakfast table the next morning, we made a simple mix of tomatoes, avocado and lime juice, and added the weird spice packet for some saltiness. It would’ve been a little better with some onion, but it was still delicious. The avocados were big, too, not like teensy California avocados, so we only needed half an avocado in each dish, and gave the leftover vegetables to someone else at the inn.

As far as the cost goes, this really isn’t fair to compare to dishes made in the US. Clearly, if you like good food and not spending much money, you can live very well in Peru. Making this identical dish in upstate NY would probably run you over $2.00**, and it wouldn’t taste as good.

Deliciousness Rating: 8
(Where 1 is gross, 5 is good, and 10 is Manolo’s chocolate con churros)

The standings so far:

Extras:

Recipe Cost Rating
Barbeque Sauce $2.80 a bottle 9

Have a recipe you think is cheap and delicious? Send it to me and I’ll eat it! – norm@ridinkulous.net –

* The stated deliciousness of each recipe is solely the opinion of the author. Cost is objective, but your tastes may vary.

 ** Right now, avocados cost about $1.19 right now, just okay tomatoes are $1.49/lb at best, and limes are 50 cents each.

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