Arroz con leche...y helado y chocolate..

According to most parents, dinner comes before dessert. I guess the same will be true for this blog post. But clearly it's about the dessert. Apparently each week someone in the house makes dinner for everyone and we eat family style. The new volunteers are supposed to do it, so my week may be coming up soon. Any suggestions on what to make would be much appreciated. I think the idea is to do something from your home country, but what is American food anyways?? I'm surely not making hamburgers and french fries...Anyways! Ursula, a volunteer from California, but raised in Peru, cooked last night. She made rice with lentils and fried bananas. Very delicious. Moreso with aji added to it, which is a hot pepper sauce they add to just about everything here. We had it with beer, aptly named Trujillo. It tasted like bud light diluted with water. But the beer was just an added bonus anyways. When the meal was finished, I mentioned I was craving some chocolate, as I often am after a savory meal. The others agreed and said they wanted ice cream. Jenna, an australian volunteers, and I offered to go across the street and buy some. As we were leaving, Cat, a volunteer from the UK, offered to make Arroz con Leche with the heaps of leftover rice. Not knowing what arroz con leche was (aside from the name giving it away) she explained its rice with milk, sugar, butter, cinnamon, cloves etc. I thought it sounded fine, but we decided to get the ice cream and chocolate in addition. Upon return from the store (with chocolate chip ice cream and chocolate con mani in tow) we discovered the arroz con leche made. With my first taste, I had the kind of moment you only get when you are so pleasantly surprised with the intensity of your enjoyment at that moment. It was sweet, buttery goodness. Already full from the meal, I gave myself seconds when I realized that if you added ice cream to this heated concoction it became infinitely more delicious. Then when chunks of the chocolate bar were added, my mind was blown. The british called this rice pudding, which I of course had heard of but never tried as how appealing can rice pudding be? But I had been foolish before today, the rice pudding wins.