You put the lime in the coconut

One of the many local food treats we get to enjoy is coconuts. Now where you are probably picturing the classic round brown coconut with thick white meat we get the coconuts before they reach this point, called a king coconut here. They are for sale everywhere, around $.18 each, sold in bunches. They are heavy. Our faithful trishaw driver brought us some yesterday and the bunch of around 9 coconuts must have weighed almost 100 pounds! They are also difficult to open, without the correct tool, that being a machete'. Chris makes good use of her sharper kitchen knives to slice them open, then usually banging them against the patio to split them and get to the meat.

The coconut water is very refreshing, you can Google the many medicinal uses for it. We enjoy drinking one after a workout. A nice treat is to pour the water into a container then put it in the refrigerator to cool.

After drinking the water we split the coconut and spoon out the meat, very delicious.

We also buy virgin coconut oil and Chris makes good use of this in pretty much all of her cooking, the flavor infuses itself into whatever you are cooking, wonderful. Great with salads as well. You can also take it for health reasons.

I'll take a picture of the oil we purchase and post it soon.

Homemade marshmallow fluff

All I can say is YUM! We can't find marshmallows here, and definitely not marshmallow fluff (Which I love with peanut butter as a sandwich). So Chris took it upon herself to make some, only it required corn syrup, yet another item you can't find here. So she was going to make the corn syrup but decided against it.

Well to our good fortune a colleague was leaving and bestowed upon Chris 2 bottles of corn syrup! The marshmallow fluff recipe was on the counter the next morning.

I am right now enjoying a very warm apple crumble with flax seeds covered in gooey marshmallow fluff! YUM!

Another nice weekend and...

Another beautiful weekend here in Uruguay! Nice warm sunny days, wish
it would never end! So I took a trip to the local supermarket and
wouldn't you know it they were still out of our cats favorite food!
I'll make a trip to the pet store, now that I know where it's at : )

Surprise, surprise, I cooked! You heard right! I used cooking utensils
and actually used the oven! I made a pizza, granted the dough was
already made but I did chop up the vegetables, grated the mozzarella
cheese and added the sliced salami. It was really good! Almost as good
as the one Chris and I had made : ) But not as good as a Chi Cho's
pizza from Virginia Beach!

That is good pizza!

When I go back to the States there are some foods I have to eat right away:

1) Slice or two of Chi Cho's pizza
2) Vietnamese Pho soup (I love it!)
3) Some good North Carolina BBQ (Very true when I came back from Saudi,
as there was no pork)
4) Big delicious Korean meal
5) Yes, of course, obviously, Mexican!

Now I'm hungry!

So, I have been thinking about some stuff to blog about, would probably
help if I got it off my mind on onto my keyboard! I'm contemplating
making a podcast : )

Food shopping in Montevideo

Just returned from are usual trip to the mercado to pick up the usual staple items.  Our refrigerator is a bit smaller than it's USA cousin so we can only get so much.
The prices are generally reasonable, as I had mentioned before the beef prices are by far the best.

As you can imagine the fruits and vegetable that are not South American or grown locally can be priced anywhere from wow, to oh wow!

Other food items can also be quite expensive, case in point.  I noticed there was only one type of whipped cream on the shelf, around $7USD.  Most likely locally made too!

The peaches and strawberries are in season, mmmmm.  Priced cheap!

One vegetable that always makes us laugh is the bell peppers, be it red, green or yellow.  They are always HUGE!  I took a photo next to a 2 liter bottle of wine to give you an idea how big it is.