Meet Senyora Maria from El Divisadero, Cafayate, Northwest Argentina 🇦🇷 - We arrived in El Divisadero, Argentina in the evening, here we met Enrique and his wife Maria.. Their charming home was our homestay in the small community of El Divisadero, in Cafayate. It is a tiny home located on the "highest part of the land". It is an old Diaguita- Calchaquí settlement, (the indigenous people of the region). - Part of our activity with the community is a cooking lesson with Maria. Teaching us how to cook the infamous "Empanada". I grew up in the Philippines, and Empanada is not different to me. I grew up eating it and even my Mother cooks it for our "Merienda" (afternoon snack). Yet every "Mother's cook is different, but if there is one thing in common on how they cook it, they both prepare it from the heart" They said, "nothing beats a home-cooked dish" and this is very true with the meals prepared for us by Maria. With the empanada, they normally cooked it in a brick oven, which made it more very savoury. It is quite easy to make, but there is a customary way of folding the dough in a more "artistic way" which we found a little challenging (this I will discuss later). One of the reasons that this cooking class is memorable for us because of the patience showed by Senyora Maria in teaching us. We always have Ignacio, our guide to translate to us everything, but gesture and smile, with waves of laughter, can go a long way. There was a time we couldn't catch what Senyoara Maria is saying, but her smile helped us to communicate, and for us, that is more than enough. "A Mother always cook with her Beautiful Heart, not with her hand.
