Buen provecho: Enjoy your meal!

In our never-ending search for fresh produce on this island, Mama Emma and I have been trying out all the grocery stores and local markets. It is surprising how different the produce sections are from store to store. Our favorite is still the weekend farmers' market. We try to get there as close to 8 am on Saturday before it gets crowded. That in itself, shows how much we love it.

 

Mama Emma was so excited to see bananas as soon as we walked in. Besides produce, there is a butcher, goat milk and cheese counter, a couple cow’s milk cheese counters, a bakery, and local artisan goods.

 

 

This week I purchased ingredients to make Chilean charquicán (a vegetable stew). I forget how long it takes to cook from scratch with all fresh ingredients. Well, the beef was packaged.

 

 

For lunch that day we had Chilean charquicán, Ecuadorian rice, and Chilean green bean and tomato salad.

 

 

I am learning that food is something to linger over instead of rushing through. There is only one fast food place with a drive through within 20 minutes of here, yet there are countless cafés and restaurants where people linger at least an hour. Nuria, our next-door neighbor, invited Mama Emma and me to meet at a nearby café to get a coffee at 6 in the afternoon and we chatted until after 9 and that, because the sun was starting to set, and we had been invited by another neighbor to come by for a get together at 10 pm! There we had Sevillian food: French fries and chorizo (Spanish sausage). The party was still going strong when we left close to midnight.

 

Coffee with Nuria was interesting. She is the first person I’ve met who is native Canarian. In fact, her family goes back several generations moving around the islands. She told us some of the interesting history and suggested several places that we should visit. As we talked, she shared her philosophy on life. She asked me why I kept smiling. I told her that a lot of her life philosophy matched Jesus’ teachings. She said that was just coincidence because she’s never read the Bible and has no interest in it. Then, she wanted to know more about our “religion” and how it was different from Catholicism. We had a really great chat and agreed to meet again.