Ham, cheese, corn and empanadas

We've gotten some feedback that we're sharing too much information about what we're drinking and not enough about what we're eating. That feedback is actually just from our mothers, but we figured it would be good to share a little of what we've learned about Chilean food.

Breakfast: Based on the breakfasts served at our hostels, Chileans eat a lot of bread in the morning, with Nescafe and ham and cheese. Sometimes there's also scrambled eggs, fresh fruit or yogurt. And there's almost always some delicious jam made from local fruit. And in a few, special places we also got freshly made juice, often watermelon. But overall, lots of bread, lots of ham and cheese.

Onces: 'Elevens' is a kind of tea-time for Chileans. It's important because lunch isn't usually served until 2pm and bread and jam only lasts so long. We generally skipped the onces because we couldn't fully adjust to the Chilean eating schedule and were planning lunch by then.

Almuerzo: Lunch is big in Chile. We usually made our own sandwiches or picked up some empanadas or humitas (a delicious corn dish) on the street. But a few times we sat down to a real lunch, like the parillada we ordered in Vicuna that included six sausages (two made from liver), two steaks, two pork loins and two pieces of chicken - it lasted us three meals and we ended up throwing some of it away. Our favorite lunch experience, though, was a little roadside spot we stopped at in Hurtado en route to Hacienda Los Andes. We got bread and salsa to start, goat meat stew with veggies and a humita on the side. And for dessert we got a stewed plum in plum juice with barley. All for about $5 a person.

Dinner: A big plus to staying in a hostel is being able to use the kitchen to cook for yourself, so we ended up making dinner many nights. The ingredients in Chile are amazing and very fresh, so we had no trouble cooking up delicious meals full of local fruits and veggies, salmon, steak, and seafood from farmers markets and the ever-present UniMarc grocery store. Another plus to cooking for yourself is being able to eat an earlier dinner than most Chileans. Prime dinnertime at restaurants is usually around 9pm and many don't open until 8pm. As I said, we never did adjust to the Chilean meal schedule, so we were usually the first ones in the kitchen cooking, or eating in an empty restaurant. Some habits are hard to break.

While the food in Chile is excellent - much of the country is covered in farms - the cuisine is simple and reflective of local products. One area we were in (dry, scrubby) raised a lot of goats, and so goat cheese was big. Another area had plenty of farmed salmon and shellfish, and so the focus was seafood. Overall tasty, fresh, and fairly healthy, except for those empanadas...