Food Cravings

In one of my earliest conversations with Seabass (shortly after I had re-educated myself as to where Chile was on the map) he was telling me that they have tea time in Chile. I half jokingly asked if that meant tea and tacos :). Since that point I have learned a lot more about South American food and have grown to love it. In fact, I have yet to have a bad meal in South America.

I grew up the little blonde haired blue eyed gringa with a diet consisting of mainly peanut butter and jelly and I never liked to try new things. In fact, I think the first time that I remember being exposed to any ethnic food besides Chinese was Taco Bell when I was about 14. Since then a lot has changed with me. Now, I’m willing to try just about anything as long as it is served to me in some sort of fashion separate from which it came (except for these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut_(egg) which I can barley even think about). When on a trip in Brazil someone commented that they liked me because I’m willing to try eating anything and not only do I try but I REALLY try it as he was looking at the size of the portion of unidentifiable “other meat” that was on my plate.

I just returned from a 2 week trip to South America (Santiago, Buenos Aires, and Lima). Seabass and I swear that our bodies are now rejecting food from North America after eating the good, fresh food we had there. We’ve tried to eat at several different restaurants here over the past few days and wound up with a “blah” feeling afterwards. Even after stuffing ourselves in Chile with multiple courses of drinks and food orchestrated by Seabass’s father who is an excellent cook we had the feeling of being full but without our stomachs feeling sick. Even my friend from the US who was visiting with us was eating a salad at a restaurant in Santiago and exclaimed with a piece of avocado in her mouth that it was the best avocado she has tasted (and she lived in California- avocado capital USA). Also, at his mom’s house we had some take-out Lebanese food and it was outstanding. I had tried Kibbeh(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbeh) on my previous trip to Chile and didn’t like it but I think the meat was bad. I reluctantly tried it a second time and I swear the raw meat tasted better than the same thing on my plate that was cooked. My gringa mind was still screaming at me “you’re going to get deathly ill from consuming raw meat!"

This is one of the things I’ve learned about food in NA versus SA- food is good for longer than we have been trained in NA. I think the FDA scares us into them keeping their job. When my mother in law was in town she had cooked a chicken one night for dinner and the next night we decided to eat the leftovers. I went to the fridge and the chicken was not there. To my horror she opened the oven which had been “off” since the night before and pulled out the chicken. On another occasion Seabass had put a package of chicken in the sink one night in order to thaw for dinner THE NEXT NIGHT. In both instances I ate the chicken and it and I’m still here.

Side note- I've also learned that Spanish tortillas do not require tortillas at all.

So, Seabass and I are really missing the food in Chile. We have decided to eat out less and start eating at home more and preparing more South Americanish food. The produce at the local chain grocery store here is “ok”. Lucky for us there is an Oasis in mid-America here which is a store called Jungle Jim’s (http://www.junglejims.com/). This is a very unique grocery store (there is only one location) which has food from all over the world. They have “50,000 imported grocery items from more than 75 countries and regions around the world.” They don’t have a Chilean section but they have great produce and even carry the Tuna fruit. We will probably be visiting it this weekend to curb our hunger for good produce.

On top of good produce I have been craving empanadas. Last night I attempted for a second time to make empanadas but it didn’t turn out so great. It was like eating ham and cheese through 3 layers of thick pie crust. If anyone reads this and has any empanada recipes or empanada making tips PLEASE let me know as mine were not very pretty. Gracias!