Cooking!

As a Middlebury student in Chile, the program allows for us to choose one of two options for eating with our host families: we can eat all of our meals in the house, or we can just eat breakfast and once (the nighttime breakfast). I ate all of my meals in the pension during August and September, but then realized that it would be a better option to arrange my own lunch, for few reasons:

(1) The amount of starch in a Chilean lunch. That plus two meals of bread = bad news. The importance of whole grains is definitely overlooked here.
(2) I already eat lunch out of the house a few days a week at the clinic or with a professor…then there’s a second plate awaiting me at home.
(3) There is a magnificent, crazy, bustling market in Conce on Saturday mornings. I want an opportunity to eat all that fresh, cheap produce!
(4) I don’t get to cook at Midd. I have time here, and there is no Proctor to persuade me otherwise…
(5) Eating out is cheap and interesting! I should take advantage of living in an inexpensive city.

So when I paid up for October, I talked to Marta, paid a bit less, and decided to go it on my own…last night, I cooked my first pasta and steamed some veggies in the microwave. I’m getting really good at steaming veggies in the microwave, and it’s only day two. If anyone has ideas for easy, nutritious, meals that don’t require an oven, please let me know!

Today was my first real lunch: whole-grain pasta with a bit of oil, salt, and pepper, steamed zapallo (Chilean squash) with brown sugar, steamed cauliflower with lemon juice, and a little bit of beet...pretty decent.

The best part is that I ate it on the roof…have I mentioned this roof thing yet? There is an overhang over the front door, which apparently is safe to sit/stand on. It’s been my favorite place in the house for awhile now for reading, eating, sitting, etc—it has wonderful mid-day sun.

Love and sunshine,

Tiernan


P.S. I’m forgetting how to spell in English. There are a lot of words that are very similar between the two languages; however, they are usually spelled slightly differently. Example of the day: construction. In Spanish, it’s “construcción,” and when I was trying to write it in English earlier I wanted to write “construcion”… Oh, my, the transition back to Middlebury will be fun…

P.P.S. I was surprised by three cakes on my birthday last week! The first in my Bible study, the second at my house, and the third at my house house, in Wisconsin (my mom bought a cake so that she and my brother could celebrate my birthday (ie: so they could eat a delicious cake). They made me blow the candles out on Skype!).

Surprised Tiernan:

The whole fam:

P.P.P.S. My ‘family’ in the pension sang to me in Spanish…and then in English. It was great.