by Eileen | Jul 13, 2017 | chile, feria, food, food and drink, health, santiago, shopping
What’s in a coconut? Several things conspired to make this event happen. First, a friend recently was complaining that you can’t get fresh coconut in Santiago. Not true, I cried! And then set out to find them, and find them I did, in the Vega, in my case,...
by Eileen | Feb 24, 2017 | chile, haha, language, santiago
When I was living in DC, I worked at a publishing company, writing business-to-business compliance manuals and newsy bits about environmental law. It was a pretty big office, maybe 60-80 people, and there was a core group of folks that I would make coffee-machine...
by Eileen | Feb 7, 2017 | chile, food and drink, haha, tea
Before living in Latin America, I could probably count the number of times I’d drunk tea on purpose on my two hands. Sure, there were the back-from-India chai preparations in the 80s and 90s, but the way we made it, it was practically hot chocolate, creamy and...
by Eileen | Jan 15, 2017 | chile, feria, food, food and drink, travel
After a truly mind-bending trip to Aysén, the far, lost south of Chile (yes, again, yes, I am that lucky), on the Carretera Austral, way down to Chile Chico, where burgeoning fruit trees literally line the streets, but vegetables are harder to come by for...
by Eileen | Dec 31, 2016 | chile, meta, nostalgia, santiago
“Tan solo eso?” (Just that?) This was what the man said to me while I was buying a bunch of grapes the other day at Tirso de Molina, the small two-story market before the real chaos of La Vega begins. In this case, I was coming from the north to the south,...
by Eileen | Dec 7, 2016 | chile, food, food and drink
“Always peel away from you.” That was the advice my mother gave me in the kitchen when she was giving me tasks like peeling potatoes, or apples. It seemed so effortless to just glide the blade along the fruit, watching as coils or lengths fell into the...
