Also in Chile: Perfect Paltas

(Knock on wood) Every single palta* that has set foot in my mouth has been perfect. I actually mean perfect when I say it - luscious green ambiguously firm and soft wonderfulness. I don't know what this country does to make their avocados perfect, but I am in love.

Unfortunately I have a propensity to get little green bits of heaven smeared/stained all over my clothing because I am a complete slob. But that's a small price to pay for eating a piece of heaven.

Things like wine, large quantities of red meat, empanadas**, cucumbers, tomatoes, fresh grapes, lots of bread, avocados, mayonnaise, and pisco*** are pretty much the consumption standards here. Sort of yummy, sort of unhealthy. And that's where I'm at.





*Chilean Spanish lesson for the day: whereas everywhere else avocados are called aguacates, in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Perú they are paltas. This caused minor confusion upon my arrival to Chile.

**Empanadas are exactly what you think they are. Pastries filled with yumminess. The classic filling, pino, is apprently the standby Chilean filling for pretty much any consumible you can imagine. Aside from ground beef and salt, it's like.... Hey let's throw in a hardboiled egg, lots of onions, an olive or two, a few raisins, and some zesty ají pepper!

***Pisco is a distilled liquor (apparently in the brandy family, who knew?) made from grapes and produced in Perú and Chile. The "most" popular drink, aside from what is essentially a rum and coke but pisco-ized, is a pisco sour which is exactly what it sounds like. Pisco, lemon juice, egg white, some sort of syrup, and something called bitter are blended together to make the drink. It's kind of great but also kind of sickeningly lemon sweet.