Topic: Chile
Just stayed in the apartment most of the day, first working on the various yearend reports, then deciding to take the kitchen for a test run.
First breakfast--easy enough as I had cereal. Everything in the store seemed to be high-sugar, nothing like the healthy selections at my Kroger. I did find a fruit and nut filled granola, which I tried with the longlife milk which came in the apartment fridge. Also, instant coffee--no filters or drip cup here, and the supermarket again was instant-heavy. The Unimart also had a limited selection of fruit juice, from which I chose grapefruit, which turned out to be the oversugary red variety. I didn't find any fresh-squeezed juices. After a little work catchup, it was lunchtime. The cooktop is gas, which is great. I cooked to Pavo dogs for lunch in olive oil; that turned out pretty well. Not particularly tasty as I had no condiments for it, but it allayed the hunger. I decided to roast the chicken I had bought for dinner. It had pretty much thawed, and I had garlic powder (very very fine here), salt and oregano to mix with olive oil for a rub. Oops no pepper--onto the grocery list. The oven had strange symbols on it so I looked up the make and model on the internet. Not much info. I think I put it on 200C bake and got ready to put the chicken in. Oops no foil. Onto the list. In it went, naked, for 15 minutes, after which I lowered the temperature to 160 C. I decided to go for a walk to the store during the bake wait. It was a warm lovely afternoon, with occasional breezes and the ten minute walk went quickly, though still my walk was a little hobbled by the blister left from the day before. I looked over the veggies and fruit in the store--only a single hand of rather brown bananas was left. I didn't see any chirimoya, which I was interested to try. I decided to press on, finding a cloth grocery sack with which I could haul back a larger catch. I picked up a 1.5l carton of carmenere ($3) and a few other items and headed back. I was unable to locate tin foil or plastic wrap anywhere. No microwave (or other) popcorn. I grabbed a dry-roasted container of mali (peanuts) and whizzed through checkout back to the apartment, now redolent with roast chicken aromas. I peeled some potatoes and made an oil coating to roast them. Into the oven. I watched a terrible movie, the last part of it anyway, while the roasting completed--Deadliest Sea--sort of a Perfect Storm Discovery channel knockoff. The view is sunset toward the mountains from my balcony.
With some microwave peas, dinner was fairly good, though the low budget carmenere left a lot to be desired. I finished it off with my other purchase of the day--chirimoya allegre sherbet, which was very fine indeed. I worked a bit more on a report, then discovered the Ravens Colts game on TV. Wow ESPN Chile had something besides soccer! The announcer spoke in Spanish, which was a good language exercise as I pretty much knew what he was going to say. As a kid I was a fan of the Unitas Colts in Baltimore and I've never forgiven them for skulking out of town in the middle of the night for Indianapolis. But they were too good for the Ravens--Manning was impressive, and it was clear by halftime (midnite) the Ravens were going down.
