In which, surprisingly, I am asked if I speak Mandarin Chinese (spoiler: no)
As you may know, I grew up in New York. And my parents were adventurous eaters. I have fond memories of walking through neighborhoods far from home where my father would hold up different food items in a store and ask simple questions. "Soak first?" or "salty?" These...
Feria report, now with lúcuma, a weak peso and Chico Trujillo
Dear Internet, It has been more than a month and a half since my last feria visit. My penance is that I feel like I have been through a nutritional wasteland with short visits to the paradises of the land of fruit and veg. Let me be clear. I am not an adherent to the...
The time I didn’t go to Argentina
I have not gone to Argentina on many occasions. But this time is different. July and August are rough months in Santiago. Bleak, rainy, smoggy, cold. The kind of cold that has you hugging your hot water bottle as you walk around the house. That kind of cold. Some...
Mental archaeology
What jogs memories free? Like money in the pocket of a jacket you've checked a hundred times for change, and found nothing, until one day, there it is, small, yet important. Today I misplaced a pen I'd been using, and reached into my bag to get another, and thought...
Me importa un comino (I couldn’t care less)
Me importa un comino means, literally "it is as important to me as/ I don't give a cumin seed." Cumin seeds, as you may well be aware, are quite small. And yes, I really did set up the light box (made out of materials purchased at Sodimac (like Home Depot) and a local...
Availability of goods in Chile re: workarounds, or yes, I really did make pomegranate molasses
At the risk of pulling rank, I will not entertain you with tales of times of yore, or as we like to call them antaño, from when you couldn't get cheddar cheese in Chile to save your life, tortilla chips were something special, and you had to eat local junk food like...
Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button in Santiago?
I recently stepped on a sweater of mine. And by me telling you this, you now know two things about me. 1. sometimes my clothes are on the floor and 2. I don't even pretend that that's not the case, and then proceed to step on them. There's a specific place in my house...
What does your country taste like? In Chile, it’s tomatoes and onions
So I came back from some time away, and saw that the flavor of Chile had been settled upon, at least until the end of the World Cup. Chile tastes like onions and tomatoes. Specifically, those two items as they are combined into "ensalada chilena" which means the onion...
More Cheese! Or as a Chileno might say, “Mas que eso”
Muletillas means "little crutches," where muletas are crutches (may you never need this word, and also not cabestrillo, which is a sling, which is not related to this post, but may you never need one of those, either). So muletillas would be little crutches, following...
Early June Morning Feria Report aka: Where have all the berries gone?
My new upstairs neighbors have given me a gift, with which they have occasionally taken away my sleep. They start riotously laughing sometimes at 7:30 in the morning, on you know, a Saturday. This, as you might expect, wakes me up. And you would think that after the...
