Lunch at the Saturday Market

One of the great parts about our volunteer schedule (three days at Bapaphumele, three days in Obs) is that we really get a chance to experience Cape Town. This includes getting to visit the chic Neighbourgoods Markets at the Old Biscuit Mill, held every Saturday and a popular day out for the locals (or the white locals, anyway).  This morning we went with some of our friends and had lunch. I enjoyed a gyro while Jeff, the meat-eating adventurer that he is, tried a kudu burger. For those wondering what in the world a kudu is, it's a close relative to the antelope... delicious! (or at least that's what Jeff would say.) We bought some double chocolate cookies for dessert with the intention of having some for lunch and then the rest for dinner, but of course none of them made it out of the market.

One of the best things about Cape Town, is that no matter where you go, there will always be a beautiful mountain view

It probably goes without saying that the entire time we were there I was thinking about how much fun it would be to bring Litha. I think I'm going to need counseling when we get home.

Wine, Chocolate, Cheese and Cheetahs

I just tweeted that I wouldn't be writing a post on our tour of the Cape Winelands today due to an early-onset hangover, but if I don't do it now it may not get done, and the area is just too beautiful to not show off.  So here is a quick post with some pictures.

We took the tour thanks to an anniversary gift from Marcia and Lee.  South Africa has the world's oldest wine industry outside of Europe, but what I loved about the tour was the scenery.  That's not to say I didn't drink any wine - we went to three different tastings and had a total of fourteen glasses.  Each tasting had a spittoon at the table, but after a year backpacking on a budget, we're conditioned to not waste, which explains my current headache.  One tasting had pairings with chocolate, while another included cheeses.  I'm not a cheese person, but I can throw down some chocolate.  The tour even squeezed in visit to a cheetah sanctuary, which made Magge giddy.

Enjoy the pictures and see why Magge and I are falling in love with the Cape Town area.

The first wine estate on the tour

Chocolate pairings

Give Magge an animal and she can't be happier

New Zealand, you have competition

One Month in Paris Gone

Our time in Paris generally reflects our time on this entire trip.  We felt like we had plenty of time, but we're currently packing our things for our departure to Normandy tomorrow, and we don't know where all that time went.  We hit all the city's major sites, and a number of lesser known sites, but we still don't feel as though we did everything we wanted to do.  I guess there never is enough time.  We haven't posted that often recently because our internet has been on the fritz, but we'll try to catch up on a least a few posts.

To celebrate our last night here, we stopped at a local patisserie to pick up some pastries.  The goods here are pretty expensive (€4-5 each), so we had stayed away until tonight.  Magge chose a macaron, a staple of French pastries, and I got Le Récif, chocolate mousse with thyme covered in ganache sitting on a brownie.  It wasn't the best dessert I've had in Paris, and the thyme-chocolate combination was definitely a little different, but I still enjoyed it.  I later found that this exact pastry was absolutely skewered by a pastry critic: "The Récif is like the sad, maladroit fumbling of a first year pastry student at a 3rd-rate culinary school.  This is a piece almost completely bereft of anything redeeming... This is trash."  To each his own, although the level of vitriol in the review made it sound like the sad, bombastic fumbling of a first year pastry critic that failed out of a 3rd-rate culinary school.  If having a sophisticated palate means you can be that angry at dessert, then I don't care to develop mine any further.

French Hot Dog

Who goes to Paris and eats a hot dog?  I do.  Emily took us to one of her favorite crepe stands for lunch, and mentioned that their hot dogs look good but she had never had one.  I stepped up to the plate.  A thick layer of emmental cheese is placed on a hot griddle.  Once that has melted, two franks (and that's for a simple, you can get a double if you want your heart attack a little sooner) are placed on top and then smothered in ketchup and mustard.  The cheese is then wrapped around the hot dogs like a crepe and is then placed in a baguette.  Count on the French to make something like a hot dog a little more elegant.  And delicious.

Baguette to Bistro: A Culinary Tour of Paris

After almost nine months of being constantly on the move, Jeff and I have been relishing our month-long sojourn in Paris.  I have been excited for quite some time now to get to spend a month being a Parisian.  Albeit a Parisian that doesn't actually speak French, but I'm trying!

So what are some of the perks of being a Parisian?  Well the food, of course!  Sadly, due to our budgetary constraints, we have not been able to partake in many of the gastronomical wonders Paris has to offer.  Prior to leaving for our trip we thought New York was an expensive city.  We have come to find, however, that New York is in fact one of the less expensive major cities.  Go figure.  Though we cannot afford to eat out, we have quickly adapted to the Parisian custom of buying fresh baguettes every day at the local boulangerie (see, look at my fantastic French skills.)

To further our experience of French culinary culture, we decided to take part in the Baguette to Bistro tour offered by Context Travel.  As the title promises, we began our tour with a discussion of the iconic baguette.  Interestingly, we found out that the baguette came into fashion following the Second World War as a backlash to the large, round loaves of dark bread that were given as rations.  What's the opposite of big, dark, and round?  Long, thin, and white . . . the baguette!

The French Don't Have French's Mustard

I try to embrace, or at least sample, the local food culture as much as I can.  I think eating guinea pig, sheep testicle and salted animal fat soup on this trip attest to that.  However, there are times when I need yellow mustard on my sandwiches, and that time is most lunches.  Over here, though, they call yellow mustard 'American mustard' and the grocery stores don't carry it.  Apparently, there is nothing French about French's mustard, a fact that the company wanted to make abundantly clear in 2003 when they feared a boycott of their products.

Where do you go in a foreign city to get that food product from home you are craving?  If you're lucky, an American specialty food store.  We found one in Paris called The Real McCoy, which sells American staples such as Double Stuff Oreos, Aunt Jemima pancake mix, Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper and, yes, French's Yellow Mustard.  The prices are steep (€9 for Double Stuff Oreos!), but the American expat community here must really appreciate them, because they have two locations within a block of each other.

Almost all the processed American foodstuffs you'd ever want, plus the processed Australian/New Zealand foodstuffs (Marmite and Vegemite) you'd never want

The Real McCoy - Epicerie Americaine

Hanoi

It took me five minutes, the time it took the taxi to take us from the train station to our hotel, to decide I liked Hanoi.  Even at 6am, its tree-lined streets seemed to drip with character and we were looking forward to doing some exploring.  Three days later, both Magge and I have decided that Hanoi is our favorite city that we've visited on this trip.

McDonald's in French Polynesia

Beautiful Tahiti is home to tropical mountains, waterfalls, black sand beaches, light blue lagoons and three McDonald's. In continuing our quest to check out one McDonald's in each country we visit (except for Vietnam, which still doesn't have one... yet), we ate lunch at the location in central Papeete.

McDonald's in Chile

The day after my menu roulette debacle in Castro, I wanted to eat something I knew I would enjoy for lunch.  I told Magge that if we saw a McDonald's in Puerto Montt, that was going to be our one McDonald's stop in Chile.  Walking towards to Plaza de Armas, we saw the golden arches pierce the sky and smiled knowing lunch was going to be good we would get to continue our cultural study.

Quiet Days in Valdivia and Chiloé

It was tough to leave Pucón after seven days, especially since the weather was great towards the end and the forecast looked even better.  Somehow we pulled ourselves away to visit Valdivia and the island of Chiloé.  Both places were fairly uneventful, which isn't necessarily a bad thing considering both Magge and I (but more Magge) were battered and bruised from our activities in Pucón.  We did a lot of wandering, ate seafood and then made our way to Puerto Montt.

Lake Titicaca (We can't say it with a straight face either)

Disclaimer: As I sit here in Puno writing this post, one of Peru's at least once-weekly parades is occurring outside. One thing Jeff and I have learned during our time in this country is that Peruvians love a parade - the louder, the better. So, as irreparable damage is being done to my hearing, I will try my best to concentrate and get this post done.

Left: The ridiculous parade going on outside right now

McDonald's in Peru

To continue our feature on McDonald's around the world, Magge and I ate dinner at Trujillo's first, and I think its only, McDonald's on Saturday night.  According to my research (I'm taking this seriously), it opened in 2008 as the first McDonald's in Peru outside of Lima.  It is found in the food court of a fairly upscale mall, along with other healthful American staples such as KFC and Papa John's.

I know this picture isn't great - Magge took it.

Happy Thanksgiving From Peru, Where the Chicken Tastes Like French Toast

We spent our Thanksgiving Day taking a nine hour bus from Loja, Ecuador across the Peruvian border into Piura.  Despite the length, it was actually a nice bus ride due to music being played at less than earbleeding levels, the lack of an over-amorous couple next to me (which has happened twice now) and the scenery.  Setting south from Loja, the bus wound its way through lush, green mountains before making its way into a red and brown landscape that looked like it was imported from Arizona's Sonoran Desert.  As we traveled southwest into Peru, the mountains became more and more distant and eventually disappeared.

Piura has been the least impressive city or town we have visited so far.  The sides of the road coming into the city are covered in trash; the litter is so pervasive and evenly spread that it seems as though it's someone's job to drag around a huge garbage bag with a hole in the bottom.  The traffic here is much more chaotic than anything we saw in Ecuador, and looks like what I've read the traffic is like in Bangkok.  There are cars everywhere and traffic signals nowhere, and most of the cars are taxis (I would guess that taxis outnumber private vehicles at least ten-to-one).  Taxis here, like in most cities around the world, hold little regard for human life.  At least getting across the streets in this city is good practice for Southeast Asia.

We ate our Thanksgiving Diner at a little restaurant in downtown Piura.  I ordered chicken supreme, which I assumed was a rotisserie chicken, since that seems to be popular around here.  It was instead a breaded, pan-fried chicken filet, but it still looked good.  After my first bite, I could taste cinnamon, which was a little odd but the spice seems to be used more often here than in the US, so it wasn't completely surprising.  However, even aside from the cinnamon, the taste was weird but familiar, but I couldn't immediately put my finger on it.  A few more bites confirmed that it tasted exactly like french toast.  Magge and I came to the conclusion that it was fried in the same pan that fried their eggs and sweet plantains.  Bread + eggs + sweetness + cinnamon = french toast.  I love french toast, but not when I'm expecting to taste chicken.  Worst Thanksgiving dinner I've ever had.  As I tell Magge (when I'm trying to deflect how terrible something is): it's all part of the experience.

McDonald's in Ecuador

Despite their insistence in using the terrible "I'm lovin' it" campaign (bring back What you want is what you get or even We love to see you smile), I am a fan of McDonald's. Yes, I know that their food is bad for me and that they represent an 'evil corporate culture', but their food is comfortable and consistently delicious.  

Thanks to my friend Serge, I found out that there is a McDonald's in every country I am planning to visit except for Vietnam.  Magge and I have thus decided that we are going to try a McDonald's in each country; not because we need American food and don't want to try the local cuisine (for proof, read yesterday's cuy entry), but because we want to approach it as an anthropological and cultural study (worst justification ever? maybe).  To kick off this recurring feature, here is our look at a McDonald's in Ecuador.

It's Cuy Time, Baby

The guinea pig is every American and Canadian kid´s favorite rodent.  Most everyone either has had one as a pet or knows someone who did.  However, in Andean cultues, the animal has been dometicated for approximately 7,000 years for the purpose of food.  To this day, cuy (roast guinea pig) is eaten by residents of Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, and by tourists wishing to impress the locals.  I had planned on waiting until we got to Peru to try out cuy, but our spanish school organized a trip today to a town about thirty minutes from Quito to eat it in a traditional diner, so Magge and I decided to check this off our list early in the trip.

I actually liked it, although it was a lot of work for the food and it was pretty expensive.  For the price of half a cuy, I could buy 4 set lunches (soup, rice, meat and fruit salad), so I probably won't eat it again on this trip.  Magge did not like the taste and did not finish her plate.

Pictures in the full post, but you may not want to see them if you've ever owned a guinea pig as a pet.