Chilean Food: The Good

As you may have read in my last post, Chilean food was not as enticing to me as Colombian food.  Don't despair, if you are one of the two or three people besides myself who actually reads the things I write, because I did, in fact, find things to eat that provided me with genuine enjoyment (and I ate those things over and over and over again)...

Homemade hostel dinner of pork and vegetable quesadillas
with one of my personal guacamole experiments (avocado,
merquen, garlic salt, tomato and a little hot sauce).

1. This country has some amazing avocados, and they put mashed avocado on EVERYTHING.  While I can't say I always approve of the portion sizes in Chile, I have to admit that eating a sandwich with half a pound of ripe, mashed avocado on top is a pretty satisfying experience.  Having found Chilean restaurant cuisine to be a little out of my preferred price range in relation to the quality of what I was getting, I spent a lot of time perfecting my personal guacamole recipe and making picnics with guacamole tacos.  I still get a little wistful when my friends share photographs from Chilean markets, or when I go to Kroger and touch the overpriced, hard-as-a-rock avocados I am supposed to accept as my consolation prize.

2. They have merquen.  Merquen, or merken, is a ground seasoning made from a chili pepper used in traditional Mapuche cooking.  Also, it's freaking awesome.  Any restaurant or cafe in Chile that's worth even walking into will have merquen on the table for use on pretty much everything you eat (meat, vegetables, pizza).  The flavor is a little bit spicy and a lot smoky, and it is very versatile.  My favorite use for merquen is to put an absurd amount of it into my mashed avocado (with garlic, salt and lime) for a nice smoky guacamole (which inevitably ends up on my homemade guacamole tacos).  I am now salivating.

3. Paila marina (if you find a good place to get it) is pretty much the best local cuisine in Chile.  When I am unsure about a local cuisine, I tend to put my trust in the local free city tours to steer me in the right direction.  Unlike an expensive paid

Paila marina from Pailas Blancas, in the Mercado Central.  I
went to this restaurant and ordered this dish every time a new
person came to Santiago and wanted to have lunch with me.

tour, these people, who work on tips, will tell you where to go to get food that is both delicious and cost effective.  On my second day in Santiago, I went on a tour where the tour guide would not stop talking about a seafood soup called paila marina, and pointing out which places had it on the menu.  Paila marina basically consists of some broth and a ridiculous amount of assorted seafood.  (Or, at least, it does if it's good.  A friend of mine had a bad paila marina at a bar that contained more onions than seafood, and in which all the seafood was grossly overcooked.)  A bowl of paila marina ordered at the Santiago fish market is very likely to be the single best thing you put in your mouth while traveling in Chile.  If served with a proper hot sauce (*note: finding a proper hot sauce in Chile is almost like finding a unicorn - they tend to be incredibly bland, and some do not contain even a hint of spice, consisting of nothing but chopped tomatoes with chopped onions), which, so far, I've only found at the restaurant pictured above or in my own backpack stash, it becomes almost a religious experience for the seafood lover.  Squid, octopus, mussels, clams, shrimp, fish and occasionally some other mystery seafood so thoroughly fill the bowl that I considered it almost a feat in competitive eating to consume this meal the three or four times I had it.

The prettiest fried empanada I ate:
tomato, cheese, spinach.  The best one was
shrimp and cheese, but it was less
photogenic.

4. The fried empanadas are good enough to compensate for the failure of the baked empanadas.  I thought empanadas in Chile were a bust until I went to Valparaiso, where the guide on the local free city tour took us to an empanada place that served them fried.  At that moment, I took back every bad sentiment I had expressed about Chilean empanadas.  While the dough remains a bread dough and not the crispy, amazing corn of its Colombian counterpart, far less excess bread goes into these warm, gooey treats, where the cheese actually melts properly and sometimes you might even detect the presence a vegetable (hooray for nutrients in my fried treats)! The only negative thing about fried empanadas in Chile is their limited availability compared to the less appealing baked ones.

*Bonus: The fried shrimp and cheese empanada, which I discovered in a tiny port town where I went to see penguins, is probably the second best thing I put into my mouth in Chile (after paila marina, you perv).

*Double bonus: When your travel companion tries to order empanada #6 and empanada #72, and, due to language barriers, orders six of empanada #72, leading to a full day of consuming nothing but fried empanadas!

Santa Emiliana was one of my favorites!

5. When all else fails, wine.  The thing about Chile is you don't have to like the food that much, because almost everything tastes good when you've had enough wine!  It's ubiquitous, it's delicious, and you can get some great stuff for about $3 USD per bottle.  So drink up!

Chilean Food: The Bad and the Ugly

Chilean food... What is it good for?  Well, it's good for spending a lot of money, getting really fat and feeling like you have a giant brick in your stomach.  (Actually, some of it tastes pretty good, but due to portion sizes only a linebacker could love, still qualifies as "the ugly".)

The Bad AND The Ugly:

I forget the name of this piece of feces masquerading as food that I
consumed one day in the aftermath of a massive wine hangover,
but I understand it to be tomatoes, cheese whiz and oregano on a
stale bun.  I believe I had to ask them to hold the mayonnaise. (because
what's processed meat and cheese whiz without mayo, right?)

Hot dogs.  Probably the most appalling thing about Chilean cuisine is the abundance of disgusting, heavily topped, mayonnaise-drenched crappy processed meat on stale bread that they like to refer to as hot dogs.  (Example: The Italiano.  It is not the remotest bit Italian, but dubbed as such because the massive quantities of mashed avocado, diced tomatoes and mayonnaise happen to make up the colors of the Italian flag.)  I would be completely shocked if someone told me that the mayonnaise alone on one of these things came to anything less than an average person's entire recommended daily allowance of calories and fat.

Because I could not bring myself to order one of these with the
mayonnaise, and I wanted to horrify you all with the image, I
stole this photo from a Wiki article entitled "Chilean completo".
(Photography credit: https://www.flickr.com/people/10039026@N03)

These hot dogs are everywhere.  Drunk Chileans and tourists swear by them. As for me, though I gave them two chances (ordering them without the half-tub of mayo that is put on each individual dog, because yuck), I could not bring myself to think they were anything but a device manufactured to slowly torture and kill the insides of the people of Chile.

Ick factor for hot dogs: 12 out of 10.

There's nothing in the photograph for scale, but the hamburger
buns pictured are probably the size of my head, if that helps.

The portion sizes.  Yes, I get it.  I'm an American.  I should have no basis upon which to criticize the portions of food served in another country, given the platters of hydrogenated crap served at some of our "fine" casual dining establishments... Well, you might think that if you've never been to Chile.  But if, like me, you've had the "pleasure" of perusing the food stands surrounding the Plaza de Armas in Santiago, or viewed, consumed or attempted to consume (without vomiting or getting your name on a plaque on the wall) one of their ubiquitous churrasco sandwiches, you understand that these people should definitely be beating out the tiny Asians at those international eating competitions.

Aforementioned sandwich.  This was actually delicious, just
not portioned for consumption by a single human.

I'm pretty sure there is not a meat sandwich in Chile that couldn't feed a starving family for at least a week.  The steak sandwich I ordered in the Punta Arenas airport, for example, featured about half a cow, a full tomato and two to three mashed avocados.  I thought I would never be able to eat again.  (And this was without the offered three tubs of mayonnaise that I declined to partake in.)  I'm pretty sure I lost at least a month from my total life expectancy by consuming this much beef in a period of less than a month, but hey, When in Chile...

Ick factor for portion sizes: 10/10.

The coffee.  I left behind one of the best coffee-producing areas in the world to visit a place that, despite its relative wealth, doesn't even TRY to serve decent coffee.  To my great despair, pretty much every breakfast in Chile came with a can of brown caffeinated powder made by Nestle, that one obligingly spoons into a cup with hot water and tries to drown the flavor of with milk and sugar.  I drank it like any good caffeine-addict would do, but I refuse to acknowledge that what is served as coffee in this country actually qualifies as coffee, or anything other than a delivery system for legal addictive stimulants.

Ick factor for coffee: 9/10.

The Bad

The baked empanadas that are really calzones without dipping sauce.  Well, you may have read my previous posts about the wonders of delicious fried empanadas in Colombia.  Empanada means different things in different places.  In Chile, of course, an empanada is about 3 or more times the size of what I would normally expect an empanada to be.  Also, in Chile an empanada is made more like a calzone.  The dough is essentially bread, and it is filled with meat, cheese, occasionally some tomatoes or onions, etc.  The problem with this is, in addition to using a name I do not approve of, it's just not as good as a calzone.  It's missing essential ingredients like liquidy cheese, tomato sauce or hot sauce to dip it in, and there's entirely too much bread.

Empanada de Pino.  Carne, onions, an olive, a pickled egg.  This
is a traditional Chilean snack that is sometimes good depending
on who makes it.  I would still prefer less bread and more sauce.

Granted, it's not the worst thing to eat in Chile (see above about their hot dogs), and I did occasionally snack on one to hold me over between meals (and by "between meals", I mean "all day", because they're typically big)... But really.  How hard is it to serve things that need sauce with sauce?!?!?!  HOW HARD?!?!?!

Ick factor for baked empanadas: 5/10.



Their fast food places that serve pizza with a side of fries (and NO CONDIMENTS)!!!

Why?  Just WHY?

It was one of those days in Chile where I'd had a little wine the night before (these things happen when good wine costs $3 a bottle), and I was looking for something greasy to get me through the day... When my wanderings to find a kebab place in my Santiago neighborhood revealed no such places to be open during dinner on a Monday, I walked into the closest junk food establishment, Telepizza, where the personal pan pizzas come with a side of fries.

This in itself is slightly horrifying to one who values the functionality of the human body, but upon delivering my meal to me, I was told that the place had absolutely zero condiments with which to adorn the mess I had decided against my better judgment to consume.  Yes, let that one sink in.  Fries without dipping sauce.  These people have such bad taste in food that they just eat fries by themselves.  (*Shudder*)

Ick factor for Telepizza: 6.5/10.

The Mediocre/Slightly Disappointing

The produce.  Now, perhaps this is because I had just spent three months reveling in some of the best produce I have ever consumed in Colombia, but I was a little let down when I walked into supermercados in Chile and saw little more than the apples, bananas and under-ripe tomatoes I can get at home in the U.S.  (Caveat: If you go to the farmers' markets you can get some of the lovely produce that is imported from other parts of South America.  It's just not as convenient or cheap as other places I've visited.)

Ick factor for produce: 3/10.

In short, go to Chile for the mountains and stay for the penguins (and bring your antacid).  There is plenty of delicious food to be found in Argentina, Colombia and Peru.

Hamburgers are Home. And Colombian Hamburgers are Love.

There are comforts of home that one craves while traveling.  While I am often able to feel "at home" while on the road, I still fall victim to the cravings of my usual comfort foods, like pizza, tacos and the one thing that is as American as it gets, the hamburger.

While I often enjoy the different interpretations other countries have of things like pizza, I've been known to say that only the United States can make a proper hamburger.

Europe, I'm sorry.  I love you, and you've done my tastebuds proud in many, many ways.  Your bread is incomparable, your produce is divine... But stop trying to make American-style burgers.  You just can't.

Central America... Don't even try it.  I'm not even sure they use real meat in Costa Rica.  They called that stuff beef, but it tasted like bean paste.  Also, I've seen their cows.  I'm pretty sure you couldn't scrape enough meat for one burger from ten Costa Rican cows.  It's just sad.

I'd basically given up on foreign attempts at burgers before I came to Colombia.  But COLOMBIA.  You, Mi Amor, can make a burger.  It's not American in its style by any stretch of the imagination, but you won't want it to be.  You'll go back to the good old U.S. of A. and judge them because there are no crunchy potato sticks and they only use two or three types of sauce, which are all totally identifiable.

A Colombian burger consists of, from what I can tell, one or two thin patties of beef, a slice or two of cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, probably pickles, one or more optional forms of pork (bacon, ham and chorizo are all possibilities), a sauce that may or may not be mustard, other miscellaneous sauces (one source says pink sauce, pineapple sauce and aji sauce) crunchy potato sticks, sometimes onions, sometimes not (I prefer not).

Too big to fit in my mouth OR my arteries.  Oops!

The Colombian burger I had last night was a special creature of its own, like something that came directly from the annals of ThisIsWhyYoureFat.com:  Two beef patties, cheese, chorizo, ham (there might have been other meats, but I'm not even sure.  I could barely keep my eyes open after one bite.  I'm surprised I lived to write this blog post after eating that burger), lettuce, tomato, all the sauces and, of course, crunchy potato sticks.  I had no idea what was coming when I ordered this.  I just knew that a person from the United States had given me the unsolicited advice that if I had not eaten this burger yet, I had to do so immediately.

I mean, I'm not one to turn down unsolicited advice about food, unless it's from my doctor and pertains to cholesterol, and this is a decision I shockingly did not regret hours later, as my arteries did not, as I expected, shut down in my sleep last night.

In addition to the joy of killing yourself slowly with fatty meat, there is the additional pleasure of all the ingredients coming out the sides, onto your face, your hands, your clothing... pretty much everywhere.  This makes the burger a two-course meal, as you then get to eat all the pieces that did not make it into your mouth on the first go-around.

So, in summary, burgers in Colombia are a major win.  For your tastebuds, that is.  They're probably a pretty big loss for your heart's longevity and your waistline, but hey, at least you enjoyed your first heart while you had it, right?

Because, contrary to popular belief, I don't exclusively eat junk food when I travel, here's a post about Colombian fruits!

This is one of the prettier cups of mango and
papaya I bought in Cartagena.  I eventually
stopped photographing these and started just
eating them, like a normal person.

Junk food is great and all, and it's important to try the local junk food specialties when visiting a new place, but I'm a huge fan of fruits and vegetables as well.  Besides, fruit is basically nature's candy, right?

Colombian produce is beautiful.  Buying and cooking vegetables here is a pure joy, as is finding those special fruits that you just can't get anywhere at home (at least not without taking out a second mortgage on your home to pay for their "exotic" nature at your local Whole Paycheck or similar "Sell us your first born child in exchange for this single organic strawberry" type store that exists in the center of most major American cities and caters to yuppies)...

Some of the fruits are familiar.  Mango, sliced, in a cup, sometimes with papaya or watermelon, is a popular snack in the cities.  The gringo price is usually around $2,000 COP, now about $0.65, and once I got a guy in Medellin to sell it to me for $1,000 COP.  It might have been the greatest moment of my Medellin experience.  I try to convince myself that he thought my Spanish usage and accent were better than a typical tourist, but I think the more probable explanation is that he was just being nice.  (You'd probably agree with this if you heard me speak Spanish.)

It's hard to go wrong with mango, and, while I don't LOVE papaya, I ate it a lot in Guatemala with my host family, served with the seeds, which add an interesting peppery flavor that I am quite fond of.

Some of the less common fruits (at least for us deprived Americans) include the following:

Sapote (Zapote)

This is my favorite tropical fruit.  I was introduced to this five years ago when a friend in Guatemala

I am a sapote.  I don't look nearly as delicious as I taste, but eat
me anyway.  You won't regret it.

described it as a fruit that "tastes like sweet potato pie"... I bought my first one soon after, and ate them as often as I could find one at the appropriate ripeness.  A sapote is brown on the outside, and you determine its ripeness the same way you would an avocado.  You want it to be soft but not too soft.  It not only tastes like sweet potato pie, but also, if it has reached its perfect ripeness, it has the same texture as well.

I found out that they also have these in Colombia when a European guy with obvious taste bud deficiencies came up to me on the street and said, "I just bought this fruit and don't like it.  Do you want it?"  I answered with an obvious yes, and delved into the sheer joy of the sapote once again...

The fruit dish featured above features: some seriously awesome
large blackberries, strawberries, and uchuvas (the orange things).

They're hard to find in Guatape, but are among the things I look most forward to upon returning to city life!


Uchuvas

The uchuva is a member of the same family as the tomatillo, which was a completely unsurprising thing to read after tasting these weird little sour orange fruits.  I wouldn't call the uchuva a sweet fruit, but I definitely enjoyed a few of them in a dish with assorted berries, drizzled with arequipe (dulce de leche goodness) and sweetened condensed milk.  I guess that's kind of cheating, but don't hate.  You would have done the same (and if you wouldn't have done the same, I'm left wondering why we're even friends).


Dragonfruit

Dragonfruit. You can't see the awesome, bright yellow, spiny
outside that well in this picture, but you can imagine it (or look
it upon Google, because it's 2015).

I got one of these basically because they look cool.  That they are also delicious is a bonus.   The dragonfruit, which, according to Huffington Post, is quite good for you nutritionally, comes from a cactus.  You eat it by cutting it in half and scooping out the insides with a spoon.

The dragonfruit is also known in some places as the pitaya, but I personally prefer to eat something named after a dragon.  It makes me feel like more of a badass.

While this fruit is beautiful and delicious, it is neither as pretty
nor as delicious as the ice cream that bears its name (maracuya)!  

Maracuya


The maracuya, aka, passionfruit, is slightly more common to the American palate than the other three mentioned above, but I've never had one, and my desire to eat maracuya was inspired by ice cream, so I thought it should be on my list.

I have to warn you: fruit, while amazing, is not ice cream. Now that the disclaimer is out there, however, I will also admit that this is really good fruit. The weird seeds on the inside are encased in a skin (inside the shell) that has a bread-like texture.  I'm not sure if I'm actually supposed to be eating that part, but I don't care, because I like it.

So there.

Eat ALL the ice cream!!!

Because it's important to challenge yourself, and I'm in Guatape for awhile, and it's $0.50 per cone, I decided to eat every flavor of ice cream in one of the little shops near the square.

I've now come full circle, as there are no flavors left to try in this town.  Hopefully, I will be able to pick this up again elsewhere...

Here is a list of all the flavors I have tasted in the last two weeks:

Brownie.  This was pretty average.  Not bad, not great.  The brownie pieces were more like crumbs than chunks, and not particularly rich.  B-

Arequipe. (Colombian"dulce de leche").  Arequipe itself, in a jar or plastic container, is deadly.  Never try this because you won't be able to stop eating it.  The ice cream was just okay.  B

Chocolate.  Because chocolate.  It was rich, and decent, and satisfied a craving that day.  B

**Maracuya. This flavor reminded me of mango, but I knew it wasn't mango. I asked her the next day what it was and she said maracuya, which is passionfruit.  This was an amazing ice cream cone, and soon to be on my repeats list.  Also inspired me to try the actual fruit it is based on, which is pretty good, but not ice cream.  A+

Maracuya.  Hell yes!

Frutas Rojas.  I expected more from red fruits.  This flavor was completely and totally underwhelming.  C.

Caramelo. This was definitely one of the better flavors, but not the best.  Vanilla with swirls of caramel.  It's not like you can mess that up.  A.

Vainilla Mora. Cherry vanilla.  Good but not amazing.  B+

Ron Pasas.  Melissa ordered this one every time we got ice cream, so I was expecting it to be awesome.  As it turns out, Melissa just happens to like rum a hell of a lot more than I do.  It tastes too boozy for ice cream greatness, and the raisins were too bulky and not cold.  C-

Chocolate Almendras, with a view!

**Chocolate Almendras.  I saved the expensive ones until near the end of the experiment, because, generally, I am more likely to have $1,500 pesos in my pocket than $3,000 (which is still only about $0.95 at today's exchange rate).  This was definitely a "save the best for last" scenario.  The reason it's more expensive is because it's a Mimmo's brand flavor, and that's the good stuff around these parts.  For the record, chocolate almendras, in addition to meaning "ice cream greatness" also means vanilla ice cream with chocolate shavings and almond chunks.  A+

Nata.  This was also a Mimmo's flavor, so double the price, but unequivocally not worth the $0.95.  Nata basically means cream, and it kind of tasted like a lamer version of butterscotch to me.  My favorite thing about this cone was that some of the maracuya had been mixed in by accident.  I loved those bites.  D

Vainilla Mani.  This flavor was vanilla ice cream with teeny tiny bits of peanut in it.  For such an ordinary flavor it was mildly delicious. A pleasant surprise.  B+

Flavor profile, top to bottom: fresa, mandarina.  Also, look at
the pretty boats!

Mandarina.  This is basically orange ice cream, and it had a tiny hint of that kind of creamsicle fake orange taste that I happened to really enjoy as a child.  I ate this in a double cone with strawberry because I bought it from the expensive place that serves two flavors per cone, and also because I told Billy I'd get a double cone for him if he drank an extra beer for me.  #priorities. A.

Fresa.  Strawberry has never been my favorite ice cream flavor.  This one was pretty good, not amazing.  Tasted a little more fake than past strawberry ice creams I've had, but I enjoyed it anyway, unlike nata and frutas rojas.  B.

Not ice cream, but similar, delicious
and adorbs!

Having basically tried all this town has to offer in the ice cream department, I have two options: I can stop eating ice cream until I get to a new city (6 days), or I can just eat the chocolate almendras and maracuya until I explode.  Option B is the answer, obviously.  (You didn't honestly think I'd stop, did you?)

Bonus: coffee smoothie for $500 COP that I got with my pastry at a place called Donde Willy last weekend: Tiny, but delicious.  An A for coffee smoothie not quite ice cream effort, especially since she squirted the top with sweetened condensed milk!

A week from yesterday, I head back to Cartagena, where the goal is to find such deliciousness as sapote ice cream to take pictures of in front of scenery for my next blog post.  Until then, I'm going to go do some pushups and crunches to prepare for tomorrow's cone.  (Just kidding.  I'm gonna sit here and read my Facebook.  I had you there, though, didn't I?)

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.