Ms. Balderdash & Mr. Blatherskite

As I assume you know, since you're here, I periodically decide to give the blog a new chance, and repeatedly claim that I will lower the bar for what I write about and how I write about it, so as to make it easier to actually write something, and thereby raise the frequency of posts. You are hereby warned that this is a lowering. I don't really have anything particularly interesting to share, but, in the spirit of age, I will write anyway, giving my personal and unique contribution to the great ocean of uninteresting information that is the world wide web.

It's 14:14 on a Thursday, I'm too restless to do anything useful in the apartment, and too bored and shiftless to leave the apartment. I've just had a rather decent lunch/dinner (lunch sort of is dinner here, one of the cultural differences I have come to appreciate and consider bringing back to Norway with me) of wholegrain arepa, my favourite kind of avocado (sadly not found in Norway - another thing I'd like to bring back. How much trouble do you think I'd be in if US airport security found avocado seeds in my baggage?), a bit on the green side, but the other half will be perfect tomorrow, tuna and kepa onion in almond milk with garam masala, and a mixture of barley with undefined vegetables and spices, dug out from the dying freezer. For dessert: papaya with almond milk and cinnamon. 

I have probably not been in possession of a fridge containing fewer ingredients than at this moment since my first months of living alone as a student. Because of the wildly fluctuating temperatures in this most basic of kitchen aids, we can't really buy large amounts of anything perishable, and are working on finishing the contents of the freezer before they turn into a health risk. Consequently, the fridge still holds a rather respectable collection of vinegar, mustards, sauces and pickles, but otherwise the shelves are occupied by the leftovers of today's lunch, a pot of chocolate icing, a few drying cloves of garlic, a couple of eggs, half a papaya, half an avocado, half an onion, and, languishing at the bottom of the vegetable drawer, one lonely carrot. (The carrot was meant to be part of a juice or a stew, but during the weekend, the licuadora (also known as a blender, I believe, an absolutely ubiquitous appliance here, and yet another thing to adopt) decided to stop working, and the vegetable grater I had finally remembered to purchase was left at the checkout at the supermarket, so the carrot stays where it is for now.)

Anyway, given my limited options, I was quite happy with my own cooking, which, to be quite honest, I usually am. After all, I rarely cook something I'm not going to eat myself, and if I'm going to eat it, why would I use ingredients, combinations or methods I don't like. Besides, I generally love food. I love eating food, cooking food, thinking about food, and reading about food. My latest food-related reading project, It Must Have Been Something I Ate, is proving to be of above average entertainment value, and has led me to decide that gourmand is a nicer label than food snob. And also, that I need to go to Italy again. To eat.

On a related (at least in my mind) note, I bring you the revolutionary news - serendipitously discovered whilst conducting some highly complex and rigorously scientific online research - that you have very likely been eating mandarins - or rather, I assume, clementines - in the wrong manner your whole life:

And with that, I think I have just about run out of flapdoodle for today. I will do my utmost to keep you in the loop whenever I discover some fact that might revolutionize your eating habits (or lives in general) and there might be more coming on the food reading theme, but I refuse to make any promises.

Weekend in the garden: Jardín, Antioquia

Since I am (supposed to be) working on weekdays, but still want to see as much of Colombia as possible before I leave, the plan is to spend most weekends travelling. Having only two days naturally limits how far I can go (and how), but luckily there’s loads to see around Medellín, so I don’t necessarily have to go very far.

Last Saturday we set off for Jardín (Spanish for garden, hence the heading), a town about four hours south of Medellín by motorcycle. It’s been raining most afternoons lately, and because of some communications issues we didn’t get going until quite late in the day, and were overtaken by the showers. Hoping it would pass, we made a stop in Amagá, a town situated on a steep hill, giving it quite a fascinating topography. From the main road long, narrow and steep streets lead down to the main square, where we took the opportunity to have a bite to eat. On this first day on my new experimental diet I was immediately confronted with the challenges of finding vegan food on a traditional Colombian countryside restaurant menu, but I also quickly discovered possible solutions. I ended up with a splendid meal of (improvised) vegetarian bandeja (a dish that deserves its own post), and was introduced to mazamorra (more on this as well later), an instant favourite.

     The rain continued, though not quite as heavily, so we put on more clothes and continued too. By the time we passed Cerro Tusa and crossed the Cauca, the rain was more or less gone, but so was the light, so the river remained a rustle in the dark below. I’d never travelled this far by motorcycle before, but I found the experience rewarding. When traveling by car, the landscape flits by outside the window; air travel I love, but it is a marvel of a different kind, and doesn’t really give me a feeling of connection with the land gliding by below, or any real sense of distance. On the motorcycle I felt like the surroundings moved in closer, and all my senses were involved in experiencing them. Clothes had to be rearranged as sharp changes in temperature and humidity marked the transitions from one micro-climate zone to another, we passed through sudden pockets of smell or music, and the bustle of people going about their lives in towns and villages, and hidden wildlife going about its life in forests and valleys could be felt, not just observed. If I could just have managed to take photographs from tehHowever, in addition to more and stronger sensory impressions, there’s physical effort involved in keeping oneself upright on a motorcycle for several hours, especially one moving along hilly and winding Colombian country roads. It crept up on me slowly, unnoticed at first, but by the time we drove into the main square of Jardín I was quite tired. 

The fatigue wore off a bit at the sight of the town. 200 years ago, this kind of architecture would have been normal in Colombian towns, but by now very few have much left, and rarely is it as well maintained as in Jardín. The whole central square is surrounded by beautiful two-storey buildings: pilasters and window frames, doors and railings all painted in vivid colours, elaborate balconies dripping flowers. In between the trees and stalls selling traditional street foods like empanadas, papas criollas and rellenas (I promise I’ll get back to the food), a multitude of colourful small wooden tables and chairs cover the square. On Saturday night it was crowded, even with rain in the air, the streets all around bustling with people, mototaxis, and straw-hatted riders proudly showing off their horses’ ambling gaits. We strolled around for a while, then retreated from the rain into one of the bars and bought a couple of drinks as an excuse to sit and take it all in and be part of the scene.

      We spent the night a few streets off the square, with one of the many local families who rent out spare rooms to travelers. Sunday dawned with sunshine and we breakfasted on cereal, fresh fruit and coffee at one of a wiggly-cheerful square tables, surrounded by old men in hats and animated discussion. All that was left of the morning, and part of the afternoon, we spent taking photographs, never moving more than a few steps from that square. 

      The sheer luxury of it ...

From the fruits stalls I had my first taste of guama and chontaduro, the latter one of those foods I immediately wonder how I will ever again survive without, now that I know it exists. Settling down for lunch in one of the restaurants I was surprised to find they actually had a vegetarian dish on offer. The seitan was quite new on the menu I was told, but apparently there had been a demand. 

      There is hope.

Less than a half hour’s drive from Jardín is the town of Andes, and a starker contrast could hardly be found. The lay-out of the place is confusing, but interesting – if we’d had more time I would have liked to go exploring – but the place is dominated by noisy traffic, there is hardly a trace left of the old architecture, and the chairs in the square are the cheap, plastic variety (sadly) found all over the world. We didn’t linger, having set off relatively early to make sure we would see the river by daylight this time. Besides, it was nice to know we had time to stop if any unmissable photo opportunities should reveal themselves along the way, if the need for hot chocolate (the Colombian version is dairy free and delicious) should arise, or if the passenger (that’s me) should, at any point, fall asleep, which, I was informed, is not the thing to do on the back of a motorcycle. Luckily, and strangely perhaps, the sleepiness wore off as it got darker, and before I knew it we were passing through Caldas, back into the lights of the metropolitan area. 

The Great Experiment

After living here a few weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that, in Medellin, finding food that is suitable for an egg and dairy intolerant meat and deep-fry sceptic, who likes her seafood fresh, her fruits without sugar and her coffee black, pure and strong, simply isn’t enough of a challenge for me. I’ve therefore come up with a brilliant plan to make life just a bit more complicated for myself for a while …

Becoming a vegetarian is not something I have ever really considered seriously, and I still don’t find the idea of me giving up pinnakjøt, trout or crayfish neither tempting nor likely. However, over the last few years, I have gradually cut down on my meat intake, and the vegetable portion of my diet has grown correspondingly larger. Partly as a result of my own and E’s food intolerances, I’ve also developed more of an interest in food: what it contains, where it comes from, how to cook it, what it does to us, etc. I’ve also thought quite a bit about eating more vegetarian food. It’s mostly a matter of habit, I think: we’re so used to building our dinners around meat or fish, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to cook tasty food without meat now and then.

I heard about Meatless Mondays a while ago, and thought it was a good idea, but never got around to implementing it. Also, in Norway, where I usually cook for several people, everyone’s food wishes and needs have to be taken into account, limiting the craziness I can get up to (E and H may object to the claim that I avoid craziness in the kitchen, but I honestly do restrain myself …).

At the moment, however, I am cooking just for me. I also have to approach the whole issue of cooking slightly differently, since I don’t have the equipment and ingredients I am used to. It’s the perfect opportunity to explore and experiment. So I made a decision: rather than eating vegetarian – which in practice, because of my egg and dairy intolerance, means vegan – one day a week, I’m going all out, completely vegan for a month. Instead of Meatless Mondays, I’m doing Meatless March.

     Why? Why not.

In part, it’s the challenge, I suppose. I want to see if I can do it, and how hard it will be. Another reason is to force myself to cook vegan food. I always mean to, but as long as nothing’s forcing me, I tend to stick to more familiar approaches. And finally, most importantly, it’s a health thing. I want to see what happens to my rather troublesome stomach if I limit it to pure plant-foods for a while. Missionaries of a vegan diet claim it will solve all your problems and cure all your ills. I have a deep mistrust of all kinds of missionaries, but I am curious, none the less. I love fresh and well-prepared vegetables, I’d really like to learn to cook more bean and lentil based dishes, and Colombia is Heaven when it comes to fruit, all of which provides a good starting point. I already find meat heavy and hard to digest, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be all right without it for a while. I fear the challenge is going to be fish and seafood. I’ve never contemplated giving those up before, and come April I’ll be stuffing my face with whatever I can get my hands on, but the truth is that Medellín is not fish country anyway, and the quality of the seafood found in supermarkets here is not necessarily the best. So … time will show. That’s the point of experiments.

And before any of you consider commenting or writing to tell me this is madness and not to be stupid: I have already been told. Nobody here quite seems to understand why I want to do this, and some are actively trying to get me to “just taste” or “just make a little exception”. However, I am quite determined (for now, at least) to do this, and to do it without exceptions or breaks. Since an important point is to investigate the effects of a purely plant-based diet, there will be NO EXCEPTIONS – that is, if I can help it and don’t buckle before the month is up. I do realize that I am making myself even more difficult in restaurants, and therefore to go out and eat with, but as long as I’m willing to pay full price for a (considerably) reduced dish (or if I could convince people to go to proper restaurants now and then, rather than the chain variety where everything is pre-prepared in some central factory), there should be a salad or something for me. It will give me an excuse (as if I needed one) to try out some new restaurants as well – I already have my eye on a couple of Medellín’s vegetarian ones.

     I’m giving it one more try.

My track record for updating my blog, as those of you who are most likely to have found your way here will already know, is not the best. I’ve had some more productive periods (if “productive” is really the word for what was, at times, mostly yet another procrastination strategy), but they've been few and far between. Lately (and by that I mean the last two and a half years), the blog has been as good as dead, except for a rather unsuccessful facelift (please ignore the mess, apparently there’s no (easy) way to make the blog look and work the way I’d like it to. It’s a work in progress). In my previous, not-so-recent post, I wrote about the possibility of packing it in and closing up shop; my decision to let the blog live for now has nothing to do with being reconciled to the surveillance we are subjected to online – I still feel persecuted. But as I have no intentions of revealing anything deeply personal, political or provocative (sorry to disappoint) on this page, I suppose the harm will be limited. And, as Erica proved a couple of years ago, blogging is actually quite a decent way of keeping people up to date on what you are up to. Thus, I hereby offer this first in a series* of brilliantly composed articles, occasionally accompanied by the most stunning and well-crafted photographs, describing my amazing adventures as I travel through and explore the great Latin American unknown**.

Alternatively: here’s proof I’m still alive, and a promise I will try to put up a few words now and then, just to let you know I still out there. Whether knowing I still walk the surface of the earth is enough for you, or you actually want to read the posts through as well, is a decision I leave entirely up to you. I will never know ...

And here's a picture of a chair:

With that, I sign off for now. Thank you, and Good Night! 

     Medellín out. 

* Notice how I purposely phrase myself into a promise of future productivity. Without some measure of outside pressure this is never going to work. I know me. 

** That is, mostly the Medellín metropolitan area.