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🌍 Country of the Week · A Spin the Globe Teacher's Guide
Bolivia
BoliviaSouth America · This week's dish comes from La Paz
About Bolivia
Bolivia's food climbs from Amazon lowlands to the high Andes, where potatoes (in hundreds of varieties), quinoa, and hominy sustain life at altitude. Salteñas, peanut soup, and spicy llajua sauce reflect a hearty Indigenous heritage.
Chuno is the altiplano's answer to having no refrigerator and too much frost: potatoes are left out overnight to freeze, trodden underfoot to press out the water, and dried in the sun over several days until they are light, grey and will keep for years. Rehydrated, they go into soups and stews and taste nothing like a fresh potato.
The saltena is a mid-morning institution rather than a lunch. It is a baked pastry with a sweet-edged crust holding a filling so juicy it is nearly soup, which is why it is eaten standing up, held upright, and bitten at the corner. Llajua, the table sauce, is raw locoto chilli blitzed with tomato and quilquina herb.
The wider picture: Andes, Amazon, and Atlantic all on one plate.
This week's dish: Api con Pastel
A hot, spiced purple-corn drink thick with cinnamon and clove, served with a crisp fried cheese pastry dusted in sugar.
Serves 4 · Prep 15 min · Cook 30 min · Difficulty: medium
See the full recipe: ingredients, steps and dietary swaps →
Grown-up jobs: any step that uses a hot stove, oven, boiling water, or a sharp knife is for a teacher or parent. Children can measure, mix, and assemble.
Discussion prompts
1. Find Bolivia on a world map or globe. It sits in South America. Which oceans or neighboring countries does it touch, and roughly how far is it from where you live?
2. Api con Pastel comes from La Paz, in Bolivia. Read its ingredient list together. Which of those foods do you think are grown or raised nearby, and how might the country's climate and landscape explain that?
3. Read the short story behind Api con Pastel. How have the people, trade routes, and history of Bolivia shaped what ends up on the plate there?
4. Compare Api con Pastel to a dish your own family cooks. What is similar, what is different, and what one question would you ask a family in Bolivia about how they make and share it?
5. After you cook Api con Pastel, add Bolivia to a classroom map and give it a stamp. Write down one fact about its food or geography that you did not know this morning.
🌍 Spin the Globe · Geography through food · spintheglobeofficial.com/for-teachers