February 9, 2009

Whenever I travel I love to try many of the local foods. However as soon as I get sick, all foods become suspect and I´m back to my safe choice of plain boiled noodles.Since I´ve been sick allot on this trip, my exploration of new foods may have to wait for future times.

Yesterday, at a road check point, our vehicle was surrounded by local women selling snacks. These long narrow plastic bags of food had white marble sized balls on the bottom, maybe goat cheese, maybe bean balls, and on top was a slurry of brown ground meat. I´d have loved to have tried them but just didn´t dare.

Two days ago, at the miner´s market, I watched two tiny girls cook empanadas on a tiny cooker in the street. The older sister, maybe seven years old, kept the charcoal under the pot of oil and deep fried the little stuffed goodies. After she scooped them out into a basket, her little sister, fished them out with her fingers and arranged them on a plate and sold them.

So many culture have little packages: cornish pastries in England, egg rolls in Asia, perogies in the Ukraine and perogs in Latvia. The South American empanada comes stuffed with beef, chicken or cheese and ham and when freshly cooked are fantastic!

Saltenas are another little package we´ve had lately. They seem to be baked not fried and are filled with cubes of potatoe and beef.

I really loved the chippa from Paraguay. These are yummy yellow spicey crescent shapped rolls that are probably flavoured with anise and probably have goat cheese kneeded into the dough.

In Boliva, we get a dry tasteless large flat roll for breakfast. These remind me of eating cardboard. To be fair, they usually come with a large pat of butter and perhaps if I slathered on the butter they´d taste okay.