Weird foods

Don't let the title throw you off - I'm not going to start talking about how Bolivian food is so weird and tastes funny and how terrible it is or anything like that. Instead, I just want to point out a few things similar, but very different between Bolivian cuisine and Canadian.

For example: sometimes I get tea from the cafe down the street from my office. Well one thing I've noticed since I got here is milk is always hot. In order to put milk in tea, they heat it up for you. To me, that's silly, why not just put it in and let the tea heat up the milk. Anyways, this particular cafe insists on frothing up the milk, and putting not only milk but also foam in my tea. I find it amusing.

At first it was fun to learn that in addition to the bunches of Bolivian cookies and candy, etc., you can also get American brands, like Chips Ahoy. You can also get Oreos, but only the double chocolate kind. You can't get M&Ms here, but instead they have "Chubis" - which look exactly the same, but the English translation says "candy-coated chocolaty lentils." I'm not sure about those...

In the mornings, everyone likes to drink hot drinks. It is winter here, after all, and these Bolivians are not from Canada and don't know what a real winter is. Anyways, we have a few choices, and all of them, in my humble opinion, are weird. We can drink tea (which is pretty good, they put cinnamon and cloves in it), except for it's like this syrupy stuff that you're supposed to add hot water to. Like they'll make a pot of tea every few weeks and boil it down to just some syrup, and then keep that and pour a little bit into a mug and add boiling water. Voila, tea! There's a similar thing for coffee. I think they pretty much make espresso, and then you're supposed to pour yourself a little bit and water it down with hot water. They call it "concentrated coffee" - I don't know if that means something different than espresso or not. Or, one can drink Avena, my favourite. That's what's in the pot to the left, but you can't really tell what it is. Well, it's basically really really liquidy oatmeal, and you drink it instead of eating. It's actually really delicious.

Another dish that they have here that sounds a little confused is peanut soup. No, not peanut butter, peanut soup. They put like potatoes and meat in it and it's all yummy and warm. Yes, peanut soup.