Food, Glorious Food ...

All the walking we’ve been doing - up and down steep hills and stairways, back and forth to the Jumbo, the wine store, the fresh vegetable market, the fish market – creates so many advantages.  Fresh air, bella vistas, great stretches, potent taxing of the heart, and regular burning of calories … which means regular appetites for our favorite fuel:  good food. 

Richard fixed his special garlic-crusted fried chicken on Thanksgiving Day, with spinach and mashed spuds.  Nothing left-over, so we had to go out shopping on Black Friday, but only as far as the grocery store. 

At the fish markets, you buy the whole fish and then watch the expert clean & fillet it.  We like fresh Pacific Sierra, a mackerel-like white fish at about $2 US/lb, that we fried … still have a few pieces in the freezer.  We like Congrio, a delicious, white-fleshed, eel-like fish. $8 US for the whole fish.  We ate half of it fried, and cooked the other half in a tomatoey broth w. other veggies.

We will definitely try (still working up the courage) the picoroco, or giant barnacle. 

Eating picoroco at Angelmo Mercado in Puerto Montt

(watch the 1^st 2 minutes …after that the same video is repeated without sound.)  Last week I learned we are to cook the picorocos in their shells in a large vat of water for 45 minutes, before extracting them to serve with lemon.  Our friend G claims that the picoroco is actually a type of crab, but I don’t see that confirmed on the web.  We know they taste like crab, as we enjoyed a dish of them at the Club de Yates restaurant here in Puerto Montt when we first visited in 2005.  It’s gonna be messy to cook them at home.  Maybe we’ll eat them at the market.  Uncooked, they were going for $1 US each at the Angelmo fish market last Saturday: 

Today, for lunch, we tried the sushi joint on Rancagua Street.  Not too exciting.  For almost $17 US we had nori-wrapped maki rolls made with centolla (recently-thawed & bland), and maki with palmitos (vegetarian- pretty good).  Tried the “special rolls” – wrapped in panko crumbs & fried, with shrimp (good) & cream cheese (huh?) inside.  The green tea, by Lipton, was tasty.  We were the only customers for the young woman who served us.  She’d answered Richard’s very important question, “Tienes wasabi?” in the negative, at first; but fortunately another woman stopped in, and pointed out “el verde, abajo” so we got wasabi after all, even tho it was paste-style from a tube, a disappointment.    

You’d think a seaport/fishing village like Puerto Montt would have great sushi, Richard says.

Maybe not on Mondays.

Low-tide view from the malecon at Angelmo:  this boat doesn't fish anymore.

High-tide view of the beach on Isla Tenglo across the channel from the malecon we walk towards Angelmo.







Last week our friend, Marlene, the owner of the marine supply store, RePacMar, in Angelmo, joined us for lunch at a restaurant called “Adele’s Corner”  …Rincon de Adela … downtown.  Marlene is very patient with our Spanish efforts, and even ventured a few words in English.  I’d been accumulating my list of questions for her for weeks:

1. Where does the city’s water come from? (Well water is pumped into storage tanks arriba, and treated before being dispersed.)  My tap water is sometimes cloudy.  Marlene suggests that might be due to the storage tanks in our building.  When the water is cloudy, I drink the bottled stuff.
   Photo above:  one of the water tanks on the upper level of the city (left), and Volcan Calbuco (right).
2. Where can I get buttermilk for my Ranch dressing recipe? (Probably have to go to the dairy where the butter is made.  Nobody sells buttermilk in the grocery stores.)  I’ve been making do with Greek-style yogurt.  Mixed with a little cider vinegar, mayo, minced parsley & green onion, & a clove of garlic mashed with salt into paste, it’s close enough to Hidden Valley to satisfy.  Add some good wasabi freshly made from powder, and it’s perfect with celery and carrot sticks. 
   
3. Where can I get curly parsley?  Aka perejil?  Marlene says it’s available at the grocery stores or the Mercados … but we’d only found it once.  Everybody has cilantro; often we see the flat-leafed Italian parsley.  Sin embargo, the dark, curly kind, so full of flavor is rare.  Marlene insisted that we try the Mercado first thing on a Saturday morning, when all the gente from the rural areas bring their produce into town. 

Well, we’d been to both the Angelmo Mercado down on the waterfront and the President Ibañez Mercado up on the third terrace quite a few times, but not on a Saturday morning.  So this past weekend we hiked up to Ibañez at 10:30 a la mañana, Sabado.  ¡Que multitude!   The usual stalls, full of cherries, nectarines, carrots, cabbage, beets, garlic, onions and tomatoes served many buyers.  The fish and shellfish tables teemed with congrio, salmon, mussels, clams and customers.  AND that whole large area at the back … fully one third of the market’s indoor space, which we’d only seen empty before … now teemed with Chilenos at laden tables on which dozens of individual entrepreneurs displayed the spinach, cilantro, radishes, lettuce, potatoes, flowers etc etc etc from their gardens.  Picoroco and heaps of clams & mussels for sale at the very back.  Fresh-baked cookies and cakes at one table.  We had a lot of fun searching for the curly parsley … the one thing nobody had! 

We climbed up to the second level for a balcony over-look …oh, so sorry, the camera’s battery was inoperado.  But now we know.  Saturday morning really is the time to shop.  Next week we’ll have a charged camera.

As it happened, we found perejil at one of the regular stands after all.  A full, fresh, fragrant bunch, tied with a strand of straw, for 350 pesos … about 60 cents US.   I chopped some tonight for the latest batch of Ranch.

Two projects, outside of food, occupy our “working hours” (or maybe I should say our working moments) these days:  1) getting the boat “imported” into Chile, and 2) opening a bank account here.  Richard (a Taurus with moon in Capricorn) is patiently stepping his way along both paths.  Two weeks ago we took the bus (45 minutes) up to Frutillar, where his English-speaking attorney, Zandra, has an office just above the gorgeous Lago Llanquihue.  A lovely, blue-sky day allowed a view of the nearby Volcan Osorno:

…and we enjoyed a walk along the lakeshore to the Teatro, before getting the bus back to town. 

Zandra agreed that the prices R had been quoted for appraisal of the value of the boat, and for “agency” to get through the customs process of importation were both higher than normal.  She’ll act as coordinator with both appraiser and customs agent, and maybe that will turn out all right.  I’m almost positive that the price the customs agent quoted was due in good part to our atrocious Spanish when we met with him.  Who wouldn’t add a few hundred dollars worth of work to deal with such inept strangers?  Our Spanish is improving every day … but sheesh!  The language of customs, taxes, values, and bureaucracy is still very much a challenge. 

Meanwhile, the Se Vende flyers R had printed, and distributed himself among the marinas of Puerto Montt, advertise the Sailing Vessel Abrazo for sale at $35.000,000 CLP, or about $70K US.

Feedback says that’s too much.  Since the boat has not yet been imported, a buyer would have to pay the Chilean government a 19% IVA tax, plus some unknown customs charges.

Richard has already experimentally slashed the price to $28,500 CLP on the flyers at Marina Reloncavi … but he’s not advertising anymore till he gets Abrazo thru the importation process.

He’s found quite a few examples of “similar” boats on Yachts.com, and hopes the Chilean appraiser will agree to a value less than $30K U.S. for import taxes.

Vamos a ver.

The bank account project has involved already several hours with Spanish-speaking account managers, several trips to the copy service to print out US records required by the Chilean bank, and many dollars invested in special delivery of signed papers for wire transfer.  $5500 US minimum balance required or else they charge a service fee of $66 US per month.

On the plus side, if you maintain the minimum balance, the bank pays 4% interest.  When was the last time we saw that from a US bank?  

I’m reading a 1995 book called Trust:  The Social Virtues & The Creation of Prosperity, by Francis Fukuyama.  Very interesting.  The author proposes that modern, free-market economic theory is 80% correct.  What’s missing is the importance of cultural differences, something recognized in classical economics.  If there are high levels of trust in a society, the economy can be more efficient and successful than if trust is limited, for instance, to within close family groups.  The US, Fukuyama says, has a historically “communitarian orientation,” even tho we think of ourselves as “rugged individualists.”  And then, unfortunately, there has been a steadily worsening breakdown of trust in our country:  We spend more for police protection than other industrialized nations; we keep more than one percent of our population in prisons; we pay substantially more than Japan or Europe to lawyers so our citizens can sue one another.  These costs are “a direct tax imposed by the breakdown of trust in the society.” 

I recognize that one reason this book is so interesting to me has a very personal root.  When I was a kid, newly able to read, and Mom was soon to give birth to my next brother or sister, I studied the Baby Names book and learned that my name, Susan, means “trusting.”  I ran to Dad with this fabulous new information, but he made a terrible scowling face at the book, and said, “Christ! You don’t want to be trusting!  You’ll lose everything!”  Hmmm.  The “Question Authority” aspect his remark sparked was mostly positive, I think.  What else he planted in my subconscious, tho?  ¿Quien sabe?

One more quote from Fukuyama:   “In addition to its physical capital, the US has been living off a fund of social capital.  Just as its savings rate has been too low to replace physical plant & infrastructure adequately, so its replenishment of social capital has lagged in recent decades.”
I’m hopeful that Part V of this book will bring ideas for “enriching trust.” 

On the other hand, as part of my study of the Spanish language, I’m watching a telenovela called Avenida Brasil.  Originally in Portuguese, this celebrated soap-opera is dubbed for Chilean TV in Spanish, so there is that small problem of the lip-synch being un poco confundiente.  However, I’ve invested many hours and have begun to train my ear.

 

 The story involves unbelievable passion, revenge, fierce love, vast idiocy, and is set in Rio with scenes of children working in the huge landfill-dump, and wealthy ex-futbol stars in their Ipanema mansion, with lots of marketing in the Divino neighborhood and Copocabana beach scenes too.  I’m afraid I’ve become addicted.  According to Wikipedia, the series will begin in English in the U.S. next year.   If you go to the Facebook site:  telenovelas chilenas  you can scroll to find a link to the latest chapter.  I’ve just watched Capitulo 92. 

Onward, into the future.  May December delight you with holiday warmth.  We're wondering when the ssssssummer is going to show here in the Southern climes.
'ta luego ...