Colombian street food... The fried...

While some may find this hard to believe, as I have a reputation for food-related hedonism, I am not someone who eats deep-fried food.  It just doesn't end well most of the time.  Cue Paramore singing: "You are... the only exception..." and you have me singing along with her as I gaze lovingly at my delicious, delicious deep-fried Colombian food...

This picture was not taken sideways.  Don't ask
me why Blogger felt the need to post it this way
and not have an option to correct it.  Just know
that it was freaking amazing and let's leave it
at that.

My love affair with these oil saturated treats began in Playa Blanca, the beach near (ish) to Cartagena, when my friend and I ordered the arepas con huevo at a place on the beach where we had just purchased a tasty adult beverage in exchange for free use of chairs and shade all day.  I had tasted the arepa con huevo before, but not in all its straight-from-the-oil glory, drenched in hot sauce (as all savory foods ought to be).  From this moment, I was a changed woman, and I would not say no to fried Colombian goodness again. 

Get in my belly, fried meat with potatoes covered in local picante!

Since this life-altering moment, I have been making up for lost time with my estranged friend the deep-fryer.  I had to face facts.  The Colombians know how to do fried WAY better than the Americans.  Several days later, we were taking a long walk in the National Park, Parque Arvi, which is attained through an arduous (or awesome) journey composed of a Metro ride, then two separate, relatively long cable car rides over the city and then a forest, when, about 2 miles from the cable car station to a picnic area, we realized that we needed to be fed immediately.  Miraculously, after passing the children who were swimming in a creek next to the "No Nadar" ("No Swimming") sign, where the friendly Medellin policia also encouraged US to swim, we came upon a wonderful goddess of a woman with a sizzling fryer selling empanadas for $1.000 COP (about $0.33).  She also had a jar of Colombian picante (hot sauce), which is generally homemade and typically comes in a tupperware container or one which once held instant coffee.  At the moment I consumed it, this was the greatest thing that had been in my mouth since entering this country (and I have eaten mangoes that have made me swoon).  I don't care if you're a vegan, or your doctor tells you to stop eating meat and salt, lest you instantly die of a heart attack.  If you come to Colombia and don't eat an empanada, your life has been wasted.

(*Pro tip: The best empanadas are: 1. fresh from the fryer, and/or 2. from the places with a bunch of people waiting for them to come out of the fryer.  Otherwise, they've been sitting there all day, and may or may not be something you will come to regret an hour or two later.)

If these don't remind you of BK onion rings,
you had a very different childhood than I did.

 Now, I can't very well have this lengthy discussion on the merits of clogging one's arteries on deep fried Colombian foods without mentioning at least one non-savory option.  While I regrettably have not yet tried the fried coconut slices, I have twice enjoyed the immense pleasure of eating a bag of Colombian churros...

Now, I've had churros before, and you've probably had them, too.  But you haven't had THESE churros.  I think they may be putting crack in the fryer oil here or something, because these churros will make you see God.  I credit the fact that instead of very large pieces of dense dough, they make tiny pieces of dough that look something like a Burger King onion ring in size and shape.  In other ways, they are pretty much like the basic churro.  I think they might use some coconut oil in there, though, because the places where you buy them always smell vaguely of coconut.

If you don't order one of these, you will be sad.

 Like an empanada in its preparation, but larger and rounder, is the pastelito con pollo.  I guess they just make these in a different shape so they will be easier to identify, because, other than the fact that they are stuffed with shredded chicken instead of ground beef and potatoes, they are really not much different from the empanadas.  And by not much different, I mean, you will have to enter a 12 step program to stop eating these things if you stay in Colombia too long.  Just eat one.  You'll see what I mean.

Fried cheese bread.  Not my favorite, but that's not saying
much when it's all this good.

Last, and probably least, though my cheese-loving friends might be sad to hear this, was the buñuelo, a fried bread ball made with curd cheese. Don't get me wrong, it was good. And it probably would have been noticeably better with some picante, which was not present in the location where I ordered it. However, this was just fried bread in a land of fried meat pies. It's really hard to compete with that, and the buñuelo really doesn't. Now, put it up against some fried American nonsense I've tried, and you might see a different reaction from me...

The moral of the story is... If you're going to die of a diet-related heart attack, the most enjoyable way to do so is by eating in Colombia. Really. This stuff is good.

Buen provecho!

(*I apologize for the horrific formatting on this post.  Blogger is not the most user-friendly hosting site and will not accept any of my corrections to font size, justification, highlighting or photo orientation today...)

The time I ignored the people who told me the meal was too hot and lived to regret it...

So, I've been told I can be quite stubborn.

Typically, however, when someone looks into my pale white girl face and warns me about the spiciness level of the meal I am ordering, I shrug it off and ask them to go hotter.  Sometimes I sweat a little, but that's all in good fun.  I never regretted the decision, until that one day...

The introduction to this story would lead one to believe I am about to talk about the dinner I ate one night in Thailand, India, perhaps even Mexico... But this is not the case.  The meal was in Iceland.  At a Thai restaurant, but still.  (*When seeking a vegetable-packed meal at a restaurant in Europe where the traditional cuisine is not veggie-heavy, I generally seek an Asian place and order some kind of stir fry or curry.)

I was a non-believer when I walked into Ban Thai on Laugevegur in Reykjavik.  Authentic Thai in Iceland?  Please.  I chose the item that listed the most vegetables while containing the most chili peppers next to the item name and ordered it immediately.  Two to three staff members asked me if I was sure I wanted to order that item.  Of course! I assured them.  They probably didn't even have chili peppers on that cold little island...

The meal arrived, I took a bite and spontaneously combusted.  Or, so it felt like.  My mouth burned like the fire of a thousand suns, tears and sweat sucked out the tiny amount of moisture that remained in my body after the combustion, and I drank my water in a single gulp.  It felt like it took them about 10 years to refill that water, as I sucked on ice cubes and choked down another bite.  I think even my back was sweating at this point, but my pride would not let me quit.  I'd told them I wanted this meal (not to mention every restaurant meal in this country is the equivalent of a car payment in my own homeland).  Slowly, I sipped my beer, hoping the sugar would neutralize the Thai pepper I had accidentally eaten in my first two bites.  (I'd taken a ten minute break afterwards to pick out every other Thai pepper, but it still want not enough to make my mouth stop feeling like its thermal energy could power the city of Reykjavik.)

For 45 long minutes, my friends watched in gentle amusement/horror as I choked down Every. Last. Bite. of this nightmare of a meal.  I chewed ice cubes, I laughed, I cried.  Sweat poured down my reddened face.

Then I finished, smiled proudly, and paid my bill (enough to pay the annual wages of a Malaysian child in a clothing factory).

I'll never doubt you again, Iceland.  That was a meal I will not forget.

Local street food in Cartagena...

So, welcome to my first full day of temporarily residing in Colombia.  I decided today was a good day to sample the snacks/street food a little.  Of course, I cheated and started with pizza, because I was hungry, it was $0.75, and, hey, it's pizza.  My choices were ham and pineapple, so I went with the simple, South American classic pizza con jamon (as I had in Peru and Argentina years ago).  Nothing to write home about, but it was hot and cheesy and, as stated, $0.75 (2,000 COP)...

Pizza con jamon, consumed in a place that catered to locals
in the otherwise tourist-filled walled city.

Mango and watermelon fruit cup with at least
one whole mango in it.  This was pretty much
awesome.

A quite popular local item that every vendor in the city was trying to sell me this late morning/early afternoon was a "copa de frutas" (sliced fruit in a plastic cup).  That's pretty much a no-brainer at another $0.75, and it was so big I had to stuff myself to finish it.  What you see here is mango and watermelon (sandía), delicious and refreshing after 2 hours of stalking monkeys and walking the walled city in the blazing sun of their rainy season (which, so far, is decidedly less rainy than this month in Georgia has been).

This coastal version of the arepa, deep fried with an egg filling,
was my early evening snack today for a whopping 2,000 COP.

Last, but not least, I ate my first Colombian arepa today!  For those who don't know, an arepa is a round corn cake filled with things. In this case, I got one filled with (mostly) egg and chicken (huevo y pollo).  Everyone seemed worried when I doused it in hot sauce, but it really was not that spicy (I've taken the gamble and regretted it before, but not this time).  The price was, once again, about $0.75 (or a little less, depending on the exchange rate, which, according to where you get your money, can vary from 2,600 COP to 3000 COP).  From what I've read about the Colombian arepa, this fried version with egg filling is a coastal variant.  I've also watched them grill a similar concoction which is stuffed with cheese.  This will likely be my next street food experiment in Cartagena!

I think I just made myself hungry and need to go to dinner now!