What's Cookin', Good Lookin'?

This post is dedicated to our foreign domestic help at home - we affectionately know her as Mana. She has been with us for the past 3-4 years, I think, and is due to go back to her family soon. I know my parents will miss her for sure, and we will definitely miss her helpfulness and her cooking!

With our realisation that our budget cannot last us till our scheduled return to Singapore in March 2010, we did what anybody and any company would do - we looked for additional revenue, and we tried to reduce costs.

So, not only are we selling some of our prized photos encapsulated into a lovely 2010 calendar, we are also looking for ways and means to reduce costs. So we have cut out tours that may be repetitive in nature (like taking a cruise to see sealions, because we have already seen sealions lazing on a beach along Highway 1, from Los Angeles to San Francisco). We have also decided to tighten our purse strings by cooking more often again.

Inspiration for the blog title

However, unlike the early days of the trip when cooking meant cooking instant noodles, we have decided that it is high time we expanded our repertoire. Seriously, we don't want to come back bald and malnourished due to MSG, right? I mean, I have a beautifully-shaped head and can look pretty good bald, but I think the wife will be a horror to look at!

More importantly, how can we forget that we were in the country of the most delicious steak we have ever tasted and it was only USD 10 for both of us??! How can we ignore that and just eat instant noodles??!

So, we decided that we would try to cook more interesting meals. Include some meat! Toss in some veggies! In the cauldron boil and bake, eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog, adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, these are a few of our favorite things!

And, whaddaya know! I think our first few creations turned out pretty good! We probably still don't qualify to be mentioned in food blogs by my ex-colleague or the wife's friend, but hey, we've levelled up in a skill that really matters!

Our first experimental meal was in Mendoza, where we hopped into the supermarket to buy a few slabs of meat from the thigh of a cow, and some canned mushrooms. Chucked it onto a saucepan with some oil and flipped it around every minute or so. And... voila!

Cost of this meal? About USD 2 for both of us!

Experiment 2 also featured beef - this time, we chose meat from the rump. Added some unidentified leafy green vegetables and fried some of our leftover instant noodles. Rounded it off with a small bottle of Argentinean red wine at USD 1.

This was slightly more expensive, at USD 6...

But that's because we are still experimenting with the quantity to buy as well. We will get better! Cheers!

Our third experiment was in Santiago, where we got ourselves some curry-flavored rice, brocolli and chicken thighs. Chicken was more difficult to cook than beef though. Took a really long time before the meat turned white enough for us to trust. And this was also the meal where the hostel owner complained to me about us splattering oil all over his kettle and stove.

Food in Chile was more expensive. This meal cost us USD 7.

Our conclusions after these 3 experiments?

1) Cooking is fun!
2) Cooking together is fun!
3) Cooking is also challenging, but it is fun!

Now, I have a request for all those friends and readers who have been posted overseas or studied overseas before - give us some ideas on stuff that is easy to cook! Personally, I would really like to tackle fish soon, but it does seem pretty complicated...

Santiago

As we make our way down South America, our bodies have slowly but surely adjusted to the rigors of long bus rides.

We drink less water and eat less, thereby trying to eliminate the need to visit the toilet. (There's usually one on board the bus, and it's usually clean, but only for the first 10 users! There's usually no running water in the sink though. Irritating.)

Long bus rides are usually better taken at night, though. We surrender our safety to the driver's wakefulness, and sleep through the ride. It's not a particularly comfortable sleep, and we do keep waking up, but we get enough rest to tide us through the next day. Also, the savings of not having to pay for another night at the hostel makes night-riding a lot more worth it.

Sometimes, though, we have no choice. One example is our Mendoza-Santiago ride. Whether it is due to safety reasons (the route is through a mountainous range) or operational reasons (Mendoza is in Argentina, and Santiago is in Chile. We need to get through Immigration and Customs, which might not be open all the time), we are not sure. Maybe a mixture of both.

But one thing is for sure - this is one of the more scenic bus rides we have taken in recent times!

Snowy mountains against a blue, blue sky

The combined Argentinean/Chilean Immigration & Customs building. Wouldn't you like to step out of the office to see scenery like this?

Bridge over Argentinean waters

Headed into Chile for our third and final time, we made a 4 day/3 night stop in Santiago, the capital of Chile, and checked ourselves into a hostel run by a crusty old man named Scott. Okay, okay, Scott seemed crusty only to me. He seemed pretty nice to the wife though. I suppose he doesn't get to see pretty Asian women often. ;) Hmph. After all, he complained to me that we made his kettle and stove oily with our cooking on one ocassion, but on another ocassion, invited the wife out of the hostel to look at the moon with the telescope he set up.

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with the letter J!

Of course, the wife asked me to go out with her, and we not only checked out the moon, we checked out Jupiter too! It was really cool to see Jupiter - not only could you see the planet itself, but if you squint and look really hard, you can see the moons around it too! Fierce.

Apparently, the telescope was left behind by another traveler who somehow got a windfall, and part of the condition to benefit from the windfall was to get other people interested in looking at the stars.

By the way, did you know that the days of the week are named after planetary bodies in Espanol?

Monday - Lunes - the moon
Tuesday - Martes - Mars
Wednesday - Miercoles - Mercury
Thursday - Jueves - Jupiter
Friday - Vienes - Venus
Saturday - Sabado - Saturn
Sunday - Domingo - this is the only exception... the word refers to 'prayers'.

Anyway, the very next day, when we were doing our minimum-30-minute-walk to the city centre, we found some strange-looking Jupitan freakazoid staring at us too!

The Chileans were celebrating 200 years of independence with their version of the Marina Bay wishing spheres

Oh.... and we saw a protest too. City life is so fun! :)