Juanes: AKA The Head of John The Baptist

I learned something interesting about a regional food that I eat here all the time, called ¨Juanes.¨ As I have explained before, this is a food prepared by taking rice, a piece of chicken, an egg, an olive, and cooking it all while its wrapped up in a Bijoa Leaf from the jungle. It´s pretty tasty actually, especially when you add the spicy cocona fruit as a dressing.

But the food´s name, ¨Juanes,¨ came from the story of San Juan, or St. John the Baptist, who was beheaded. So apparently the locals thought that this food resembled the decapitated head of San Juan....sounds yummy right? Well, I assure you that it is. The reason I bring this up is because just recently the holiday of San Juan was celebrated in Iquitos, and everybody was eating ¨Juanes,¨ including us.

P.S. My cultural source for this information was Coco, so if its not true you can give him a hard time. ;)