Helicopters and The Himalayan Gourmet Cookbook

High-Flying Recipes from Nepal

The word “gourmet” is not often associated with Peace Corps service, but if you were serving in the high Himalayas in the 1960s, you may have a different understanding of that term than most of us. 

Diana Oppedal (Nepal 1965–67) was 19, a recent high school graduate from Ames, Iowa, when she received her invitation to go to Nepal in 1965. Her parents weren’t pleased with the news and suggested she join the military, “but I wanted to join the Peace Corps, so off I went,” Oppedal said. 

Pretty soon she was in Kathmandu, supporting the Peace Corps medical office and making house calls by helicopter to those in the most remote sites in the mountains. 

Somehow, her work of shipping medication and large containers of peanut butter to Volunteers in the field wasn’t enough to keep her busy, so she came up with the idea of creating a cookbook, and got the Country Director’s blessing (and budget) to put it together. 

Oppedal began bringing recipes back from her helicopter trips, including Wild Boar Brindalu, which calls for a couple of pounds of wild boar browned with sliced onions in mustard oil, and Naspati Bonne Femme, a beverage made from cored, hard-as-rock Nepali pears stuffed with raisins, cinnamon, and sugar and left to ferment. She called the collection The Himalayan Gourmet Cookbook, and it was distributed to Volunteers whenever staff made site visits. 

“All in all, there are a few hundred recipes, suggestions, and descriptions in the book,” she said. All the ingredients were locally available, and she sourced additional recipes from American missionaries in Kathmandu. 

As for which recipe is her favorite, she said, “I have to be honest and tell you that I really can’t recommend any particular recipe, because I’ve never tried them.” 

Decades later, the Museum of the Peace Corps Experience received a copy of the cookbook from Duane Karlen (Nepal 1970–72), the editor of the Friends of Nepal newsletter, who named it one of the three most treasured keepsakes of early Nepal Volunteers. 

Reflecting on the project, Oppedal is happy that the cookbook will live on in the museum’s collection. “I had actually been able to make a useful contribution to the program,” she said. “As any Volunteer knows, that feeling is worth more than any paycheck we can ever get.” 

David Arnold (Ethiopia 1964–66) is the story editor for the Museum of the Peace Corps Experience, which invites all Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, staff, and host-country counterparts to view the more than 100 stories and artifacts in the museum’s collection and to contribute your own stories and artifacts from your Peace Corps experience at museumofthepeacecorpsexperience.org.