Food Odditiy

Oooh, so its been a week in BA and we've finally found all the good things to eat, while overcoming some unexpected obstacles.

Obstacle one is the strangeness of coffee. Coffee culture is a big deal here. It's formalized in a sense, as as in Italy, there are coffees that are only consumed in the morning (not that we've really experienced this concept of morning, dining at midnight has that effect) and no one would dream of carrying a cuppa out of a cafe and onto the street. Ideally, you take an hour to sip it, sometimes more. Anyhoo. Turns out, 95% of the ground coffee sold in stores already has sugar in it. The packaging clearly states this, but we overlooked it, and have been drinking double sugared rather awful coffee for the last week. We wised up and bought a bag w. out the sugar (about three times as expensive) and all is well.

Not that we aren't eating sugar. Dulce de leche enrobed in various pastry has become an afternoon staple. We've also found inexpensive "mexican" and wonder of wonders... chicken shwarma (or shwarma de pozsho, as they would say here.) Our bottle of El Yucateo habanero sauce is certainly the best thing we packed, and sad will be the day when it runs dry, as cuisine here is spice averse, but right now we've finally gotten the food situation under control.

Incidently, we've had no troubles finding delicious wine. Some things are easy.