Gastronomical Meanderings

Today my host family invited Facundo over to cook dinner. He arrived at 7:30 and dinner wasn't ready until midnight, I kid you not. I hesitate to generalize, but I feel that Argentinians (or maybe it's just Facundo) do everything more slowly than molasses in January. Facundo started cooking, with me as his pathetically useless assistant, around 8:30 or 9:00. Soon after helping him make the apple cake dessert, I got tired and went to take a nap. I was awakened from my slumber at midnight and told that dinner was ready, which surprised me since Facundo had started cooking over three hours ago. I guess that's what happens when you make the lasagna noodles from scratch. But damn was it delicious.

Anyway, the evening of cooking got me to thinking about my eating habits and the way they evolve depending on where I am. When I was in Russia, my everyday food staples were hot chocolate and oatmeal in the morning, several Cokes and/or Fantas throughout the day, half a liter of grapefruit juice a day, chocolate tea cookies, and blinchiki (a lot like a crepe filled with cheese and mushrooms, or caviar, or honey). It's funny how the small snacks I bought shaped so much of my experience, and yet I had almost forgotten about them until today. My memories of Russia are laced with the taste of grapefruit juice and borscht and my favorite cookies. I think the foods I ate in Russia, and the foods I eat in any other part of the world I may be in, contribute a lot to my nostalgia. Sometimes I wish I could just buy one more carton of греипфруктовы сок to help me remember. Simple things like tasting a certain food can bring back floods of memories. Isn't that strange?

Here in Chile my staple foods have been blueberry muffins from Castaño, Pura Fruta mango-flavored ice cream, water with added flavor packets (I gave up on soda, remember?), and empanadas. And whenever I am in Argentina, it's something different, like Paso de los Toros soda (I made an exception in my soda diet for Paso de los Toros because it's my absolute favorite) and flan. Traveling the world has forced me to develop nuanced eating habits wherever I go, and it's really been interesting. It's impossible to maintain a stable diet when I am traveling, because whenever I go to another country the food supply changes. For instance, whenever I go back to the US, my diet changes dramatically. I start eating food that is much higher in fat, like hot wings, chocolate, Ramen noodles, pizza, fruit roll-ups (yeah I know, that is really pathetic, but I can't help it). I almost wish all of that food wasn't available to me, because it's so much unhealthier than the things I eat when I am living abroad. But if disgustingly fattening things like that are in front of my face, they will be eaten.

It's sad how quickly I have converted Facundo into a ravenous consumer of unhealthy US food products. His partiality to fried chicken has turned into an obsession; we have eaten KFC three times this week. I introduced him to Ramen noodles in a cup earlier in the week, and he was in love. I introduced him to Nutella (okay, not American, but still fattening) also, and we have gone through two jars in one week. He tried American-style marshmallows also and has gone through two packages of those this week. To my shock and awe he hasn't gained a single pound, whereas of course I eat the same amount of food, if not less, and end up gaining weight. Maybe when Facundo comes to the US and has a steady diet of pure shit for food, I will see some progress.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that I have found it fascinating to introduce a foreigner to a whole new world of food that he never new existed. It has made me aware of the things I eat and the way they shape my life.

In other news, I caught a pigeon yesterday on Cerro San Cristobal. I will most certainly be posting photos as soon as possible.