blog relocation

ATTENTION FAITHFUL READERS:

I have moved my blog to a different blog host, so please change your bookmarks to:

http://visualtactilegustatory.wordpress.com

Both food & travel blogs are up on the same page. There is a nice feature in that you can search my posts by category and/or "tags" (topic of the post), so please ENJOY!

Also, there is a way to subscribe to the blog, so that you receive an email notification when I post a new entry!

Home Eats

Well I am back home, and gastronomically loving it almost as much as emotionally! It is such a joy to eat familiar foods, that feature vegetables as a main element!!! Funnily enough, the only food photos I have of the last few days are of Mexican food, which is similarly vegetable-deficient like Colombian food. But nevertheless, my old camarones jarochos did hit the panchos tacos spot in my taste imagination. Also, the egg tacos for breakfast this morning brought me back to having my own kitchen, or at least a kitchen I am allowed to use, and confident to use.

(the onion pic is here because it is pretty)

The Last Breakfast

My last Tamal Tolimense.... :_(

Super Adventure Food Review

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of adventure, and along the way I have has some notable gastronomic encounters.

Coconut sugar patty: Carnaval de Barranquilla

Breakfast in Pueblo Bello: eggs, beans, and fried arepas (yum!)

Lunch, Nabusimake: rice & beans with scrambled eggs and Casey's guacamole (minus salsa...)

International Women's Day dinner feast, Nabusimake: pasta with a onion and mushroom tomato sauce, whole wheat toast

So Colombia! Lunch Nabusimake: rice & beans with a fried egg on top

Danger #1 in San Andres: Mango Margarita

Danger #2 in San Andres: Coconut Mojito

Johnny Quay, San Andres, piña colada on the beach

San Andres = Colombia...

San Andres lunch: red snapper, coconut rice, salad, and fried bread fruit (delicious!) from a local restaurant that only opens on Sundays & holidays - specifically for the church goers of the local islander community (we were special guests)

Crab stew - slightly gumbo-esque, save for the pig tail, which honestly looked a little bit like the male genital organ... I avoided it.

I got through about half of the soup. HUGE bowl!

This is the Caribbean, San Andres lunch: Plato Mixto - lobster, crab, snail, and an entire fish, plus coconut rice, plantain pancakes, salad... I finished the entire plate!

Seafood! Happy Casey! Accompanied by pulpy coconut water. Island life.

Fruit Salad

Lots of food pictures coming once I am back with my computer and can upload from my camera(s), but here is a snap of the fruit salad Jennifer and I settled for after the ice cream shop was closed at 11AM when we arrived in Valledupar after 4 days in the mountains with no dessert. Of course it came with cream & ice cream (passion fruit). I requested mine cheese free. I find it nasty to mix cheese with cream & ice cream...

This is a fruit I bought on the road right in front of Juliana's house in San Andres. Not sure what it is called, but it seemed similar to mangostine.

Italian in Bogotá

Penne marinara with ceasar salad & parmesean. Add a little ice cream from "popsi" at the end, and you've got an Italian meal!

Armando's treat

Breakfast crepe florentine - spinach, mushrooms, cheese, eggs :)

Midori rice: chicken & calamari in lime cilantro rice with bean sprouts :)

Bold claim, eh?

Last night I went out to dinner with Christian. Just as I was leaving the apartment, Armando came home carrying a bag, but I ran off, I won't see him again until the 17th, when I am back in Ibagué for a couple of days. This morning's breakfast I realized what was in the bag he had brought back - my favorite dinner: stuffed arepas. So cute that he brought me my fave, so sad that I left rather than enjoy the thoughtful gift.

Some snacks from Ibagué

Breakfast of champions:

Scrumptious frapuccino (vanilla ice cream, cappuccino, cinnamon, heaven)

Monogrammed Lunch

Went to Jennifer's house for lunch, where she cooked me a vegetarian meal, accompanied by this squash soup her Mom made, and proceeded to write out initials in cream. Very tasty. And cute to boot!

Mine

Jennifer's

Jugo de Mango

Nearby restaurant that sells gigantic fresh juices, I love to find an excuse to make my way over there!

Gigantic glass of mango juice in milk. Heaven!

While we are at it, why not a fresh empanada, too? :)

Raspado

My weekend trip to Manizales & the Glacier National Park of Colombia was quite the adventure (caseythomastravels.blogspot.com), but here are a couple of pictures of gastronomical adventures from the trip.

Saturday afternoon, lunch: chocolate cake, split between the 5 of us, accompanied by a lovely cappuccino. Sometimes it is good to be bad.

This was the real adventure: raspado. Basicaly, a snowball with condensed milk mixed in. We made it ourselves, at the glacier in the Parque Nacional Natural de los Nevados. Snow was untouched when we arrived, so people decided to make "homemade ice cream", as well as make snow angels, snowballs, slide down the snow with no clothes on, etc. Wasn't actually that good though, snow + condensed milk... I will take gelatto or frozen yogurt or whatever we call ice cream back home over this stuff any day!

6 carbs

Well, I accidentally erased the picture of this funny meal (or perhaps it is on my other camera at home), but lunch today was too funny to not report anyway.

Lunch:

Beef
Rice
Potato
Corn
Yucca
Platano
Arepa.
Caldo (soup)
TASTY mango juice

Yes, that is right folks, 6 types of carbs, all in a tomato & onion sauce. 6 CARBS!!!! That is just CRAZY!

Pescado & Maracuya!

Lunch in Puerto Tejada: Fish head, rice, beans, salad, meaty soup, passionfruit juice

Cafeteria lunch

Dessert: Passionfruit Mouse

Airport Hotel Breakfast (free): buffet - fresh fruit, yucca bread, baguette, muffin, etc. 2 helpings of a giant bowl of mango, kiwi, papaya, & pineapple. Heavenly.

Chontaduro & Champus: Cali Delicacies

Today's gastronomical adventures included chontaduro, a palm-plant fruit that is served with salt & honey. Honestly it tastes more like a sweet potato than a fruit, but it was sufferable.

Chontaduro from the inside.

We also enjoyed 'Champus' which is a drink made of pineapple, lulo (similar to passionfruit), corn, unrefined sugar, cinnamon, bay leaf, and water. Kind of sweet, kind of thick, not bad. Normally accompanies empanadas, which we later stopped on the side of the road to eat, with another round of the drink... I also ate a passionfruit mousse, but forgot to take a picture. This is all snacks. For lunch I had mushroom cheese crepes & 2 mango in milk juices. I am FULL! But I am heading out with my temporary host family yet again for food tonight. Yikes!

Cholado & Frickasee

Well, I am in Cali this week, a "tierra caliente" or warm land in Colombia (similar to Ibagué in climate), and the food it slightly different. This morning I had a DELICIOUS cheesy arepa, toasted & with butter for breakfast... YUM! We went to lunch at a home-style restuarant, and I had trout in a seafood bisque sauce. Before the main dish, though, they brought out a soup that seemed somehow similar to chicken frickasee (Mom, help me out with the spelling!). It was a brothy soup with veggies & dumpling-like masses. Very tasty. We finished lunch off with our guava juice & a passionfruit custard. Mmm Mmm Good.

For a mid-afternoon snack we had cholados, which are shaved ice with fruit juice, fruit chunks, and a milk/caramel sauce. Delicious. Truly.

I wrapped up the night with some mango juice & a banana ball stuffed with cheese & then fried. I didn't take any pictures of that treat, but it was sure tasty.

Patacon, sweet carb patties

Nothing like a meal of carb + chicken in a sweet tomato sauce, served with a side of sweet carb patty (plantain pancakes). How do Colombian women (maybe I should say SOME Colombian women) stay thin???

Ham of chicken....?

Mangosteeeeeeeen

I was told that this fruit grew in 2 places in the world: Maraquitas & a village in Africa somewhere. Upon further investigation, I find out that the fruit actually originated in Southeast Asia, but what the heck. It was banned from imports to the US until 2007, so it is about as exotic as it gets. I bought a bag of about 10 for around $6, not bad for something that sold $45/pound in the US in 2008....

Veronika the boss

This is a shot of lunch from today. Veronika, the owner & sole employee at the vegetarian restaurant across the street, is back from vacation, and I am back to heavenly, veggie lunches! Chick peas, fried rice, salad, cream of veggie soup, broccoli stir fry, and banana soy bread (?). + MANGO JUICE! Doesn't get better than this (in Ibagué, at least...)

Hidden Treasures & Hairy Fruits

Multigrain bun - apparently with raisins inside. :-/ Not the biggest fan of raisins....

Before.

After. Good grief that pit was hairy. But sure was tastey too....

Market

These are a couple of shots I took of the market area in downtown Ibagué. Seems pretty nice, with all this fresh produce, but alas, as in much of Latin America, behind these fruit & veggie stands, one finds open air (& not refrigerated) meat stalls, with animal blood running the streets, and rotting raw meat smell enveloping this would be fresh spot.