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.

Fish fillet?

The food has been less than noteworthy, of late, which leaves this elegant sufficiency blog rather bored. My vegetarian restaurant next to the office has been closed for 2 full weeks out of the 3 that I have been back at work. A real drag, since I used to get lunch and bring it back to the office so I could chat with friends during the 2 hour break. Instead I went to a vegetarian restaurant about a half mile away, run by hari krishnas. It was tastey food, but rather small portion sizes, and the walk took almost all of the free time away from the 2 hour break, once I had gone, eaten, and come back. I went to a restaurant up the street all last week. Meat-heavy, but at least it filled me up, and it was cheap. But last week I began going to the pool during the lunch break, swimming half a mile - a kilometer, depending on my energy level, and eating was squashed into the 15 minutes in between the time I got back from the pool and 2:00, when work begins again. I have no trouble finishing lunch in 15 minutes, so no biggie.

"Fish fillet," rice, beans, platano, & a slice of cucumber with a slice of onion for a "salad" = lunch

Arepa raw material. Mmmm Mmmm good.