8. Food happens to be one of my favorite subjects in the world. In fact, my Chilean sister and I recently spent two hours comparing our food preferences and discussing the merits of different types of dessert and fruit as we head into Independence Day celebrations this upcoming week.
Here are just a few of the highlights of my food adventures so far...
The Neighborhood Farmer's Market
(Above: Very close to our house is a farmer's market of a dozen or so vendors who congregate there to sell fruits and vegetables two days a week. Here is my smiling face thinking of eating the fruit once we get home.)
(Above: I am enjoying the variety of fruit here and, to add to that, fresh fruit at these farmer's markets is cheaper and, obviously, better than the fruit sold at supermarkets. How cool is that?! In the US, it is common to hold onto the 'logical' concept that the higher the quality, the higher the price of the product.)
(Above: Pictured is cherimoya fruit, thought to be native to the Andes. It has a mix of two tastes, sweet but with a hint of bitterness. I have only tasted its juice so far, but I am looking forward to tasting the fruit soon, as well. Cherimoya and 'tuna' (prickly pear), are two fruits that I have discovered while here.
The Supermarket
(Above: One of the food aisles at Jumbo, one of the two largest supermarket chains in Chile. The second is Lider, which is the company that Walmart owns.)
(Above: Yogurt is a staple in my family's diet. This is how much we buy for one week and still it is not enough. The way all Chileans buy yogurt - by placing them on the side of the cart - caught my attention and now I find it quite ingenious.)
(Above: This entire aisle - I kid you not - is all instant coffee and all under the monopoly of Nescafe. All Chileans seem to drink instantaneous Nescafe coffee, it seems.)
(Above: Bread is also a huge staple in the Chilean diet, most especially white freshly baked bread. There are so many varieties... marraqueta, which has the same texture as a French baguette, hallulla, which is a flat round bread, sopaipilla, which is fried dough, and amasado, a round bread resembling biscuit. This great amount of refined carbohydrates must not be that healthy, but it definitely is cool to see how many varieties of bread that can exist.)
(Above: Although practically every part of the supermarket resembled an American Wal-Mart, this part in the grocery section caught my interest: once you have picked your fruit/vegetable and need to have it weighed, instead of using a scale yourself, you stand in line for a man to weigh your fruit, tie the bag, and place a sticker indicating weight. I suppose this is due to the fact that the cashiers do not have scales and I think that it is helpful to create jobs, but it seems to add extra steps to the process and use up many people's time.)
(Above: A picture of our shopping cart. It is quite indicative of the food we eat. Always yogurt, purified water, both without and with gas, snacks in the form of cookies and granola bars, etc.)
La Feria
... which is my favorite of the three.
The feria is a farmer's market located in the poorer downtown sector of Santiago that caters towards restaurants. It sells fruits and vegetables in wholesale and, while it was not kept very clean, it gave me a look at another side of Chilean culture and, of course, I got to interact with food, which I love doing! This was definitely the opposite of the modern Santiago that I live in, but I loved the warehouse and outdoors dynamic of the market.
I woke up at 6am that day to leave the house at 6:15, before sunrise, with my Chilean mom. It was freezing cold, but one of the most fun and diverse experiences I have had in the country.
The market is divided into two: the warehouse section that where vendors sell small quantities of fresh fruit, dried fruit, and vegetables. These vendors obtain their products from farmers. Meanwhile, outside in the lot, farmers sell their own products through a negotiations (note: bargaining) process with the buyers. These vendors are, on the whole, friendly. They remembered my Chilean mom, gave her cheek kisses, and were relaxed in their attitude.
Another interesting aspect is that we saw numerous unlicensed street vendors. They were usually from Peru (due to the large number of poor immigrants from there) who were not paying the Chilean government to sell there. So, we saw women (mostly) selling grilled meat on shishkebobs and a woman selling fresh orange juice. The woman selling fresh orange juice even talked quietly about how she had made plans about maintaining her equipment when she would need to run from the police to avoid being caught and fined.
(Above: A man unloading countless bags of potatoes, which are a staple probably due to the heavy German cultural influence. Look at the gorgeous cordillera in the background! My phone camera, in which I was slyly taking pictures, never does it justice,)
(Above: There was also a fish market selling seafood of every type. Octopus hanging from wires - how horrible - can be seen. Other seafood included squid and various types of fish like salmon and merluz. This lot was quite modern, which surprised me, because it had an elevated stone landing and a space in the back to wash and cut the fish. The downside of standing in front of a fish market: it most definitely smelled like raw fish.)
(Above: A look at the market. People were either shopping for themselves or acting as the in-between for families or restaurants. Pictured is our cart, full of tons of oranges, spinach, and fruits. At some point in the process, I was carrying around four dozen eggs, for fear that they would break if placed in the cart.)
(Above: After four hours of shopping around the large lot, we stacked all the food into every crevice of our car and drove home.)
(Above: A look at the amount of food we bought. Pictured is only half of the actual amount, which will last our family a month)
Food indicates much about a culture, so I am glad to have gone on these various food adventures!
Hasta luego!
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