Hallo-what?

I have always had mixed feelings about Halloween. On the one hand, I genuinely enjoy dressing up like my favorite alter egos/heros/stupid puns. On the other hand, nearly every other female seems to enjoy dressing up like a ten-dollar-hooker. I'm not sure of the exact history of Halloween, but I'm pretty positive that it did not involve skanks at the beginning of the tradition.

Luckily, this year I was able to escape my Halloween hesitation and ignore the holiday completely (besides all those Facebook pictures of people's hoochy costumes). Why is this? Well, Ecuador does not celebrate Halloween. Not only do they not celebrate, the holiday is actually banned in schools. It is illegal to celebrate Halloween with a party or costumes.

Instead, Ecuadorians celebrate the day of the shield. The shield is the symbol that's in the middle of their flag. "Celebrate" might be too strong of a word however. At school, the teachers still did small Halloween themed activities and the students said "Happy Halloween" to me before sarcastically saying "and Happy Shield Day".

A few days after Halloween is another Ecuadorian holiday that they actually do celebrate. Throughout Latin America, people celebrate "Día de los Difuntos", or the Day of the Dead, though every country celebrates slightly differently. In Ecuador, people make guaguas de pan, which translates to "bread babies". These are children-shaped breads that are painted with bright colored icings and eaten in remembrance of the dead. This custom doesn't make a ton of sense to me, but when in Ecuador...

They also have a traditional drink for the Day of the Dead, Colada Morada. This is a super purple thickish drink filled with fruit that takes nearly a full day to make. I got the chance to make it a few weeks back at the house of my friend Priscilla. It takes so long to make that we didn't finish while I was there, but here are some pictures of the process.

Here's Priscilla with the many different herbs that are used in the Colada. It can only be made around this time because these herbs are seasonal. I don't remember what they all are, but they smell delicious while cooking!

Here I am chopping up some pineapple. Pineapple is only one of the fruits used in Colada Morada. There's also naranjilla, babaco, blackberries, and blueberries which give the Colada its purple color. They are all cooked together until only small bits of fruit remain in the beverage. Yummy!

Here are the herbs cooking down in some water. I'm pretty sure this takes hours, and so I have no idea what it looks like after it cooks for a while.

Here is the pineapple, blackberries, and blueberries all ready to cook. Again, I'm not exactly sure how they get from fruit form to delicious purple beverage, but I do appreciate the taste!