Picadillo - another Cuban Cuisine Cache in Quito

I really like FreeCuba's Cuban Cuisine series here in Quito. When the Picadillo (GC2B17C) cache came out I was traveling. When I got back to the country and saw that it was yet unfound I just had to go look for it. I parked at the public parking lot near the park, grabbed my hiking stick and swag bag and was on my way. The hike was an easy one, maybe 1/4 of a mile on a easy trail. Just as I arrived at the GZ I had to leave the trail and pick up a less traveled trail. I was in a lightly wooded area with lots of knee high dried grass. This time of year it doesn't rain much in the "sierra" (mountains) of Northern Ecuador so the grass goes brown and begins to get brittle. I looked around and mentally marked off a radius of about 30 feet from where I considered ground zero to be. My GPSr accuracy showed 29 feet. I began poking with my hiking stick in all the obvious places. Still no pole on plastic noise. Where could it be? I continued like this for 45 minutes with no find. Finally I moved on to look for another cache. This one was successful. When I got home I wrote FreeCuba. A few days later he wrote back to say he'd checked on it and that the cache was still there. He did mention that it was behind a tree. I headed back out and found the GZ to be the same as the other day. This time I walked right up to a tree and immediately saw the red top from the jar showing through the grass. How did I miss this the other day? It just goes to show that on some days you miss and other days you are right on target. I quickly signed the FTF line, took a copy of the recipe for picadillo and headed home. I'm on a low carb/high protein diet. Picadillo, minus the rice, looked pretty low carb friendly. It also looked like it would be a good dish. That afternoon I broke out the pots and pans and set to it. My wife and daughter were amused but in the end they were impressed with the outcome. Picadillo is good! It reminds me of the empanadas we could buy in many restaurants there. They filling for the empanadas were made with ground beef with a sprinkling of raisins all fried up in olive oil. So is picadillo. If you get to Quito be sure and visit the Picadillo cache. If you can't visit the cache and get a recipe, let me suggest this recipe at AllRecipes.com.