Barranquilla and the Iowa State Fair Need to Be Friends

I think the two of them would have a really great recipe exchange of greasy fried inventions.

Click the picture to see it bigger.

This was a whole plantain smashed flat and fried, topped with tomato, onion, cheese, mayo, some sort of pink sauce and finished off with crushed potato chips. Dang was it tasty. Can't be good for you. And luckily I was sleeping alone, cuz that was a LOT of onions.

The drink behind it is a soda they call Kola. It's red and VERY VERY sweet... I personally found it a bit amusing that G's dad warned me not to eat too many fresh pineapple chunks because they were so sweet, when they drink this stuff almost every day. We also have fresh fruit juice pretty much every day at lunch - the fruit chunks are blended with water and sugar to taste. So it seems like the plain fresh fruit would be the most healthy, but whatevers!

Last night we went out for another fast food dish that I think could go over well at the State Fair, if they don't have something like it already. It's called mazorca desgranada and it's basically corn OFF the cob on a little plate and then it's topped with tasty things - mine had mayo, cheese and crushed potato chips. They seem to like to put crushed potato chips on everything here, they do it for hot dogs too. I tried to get juice, but they were out of juice. So then I tried to get orange soda but they were out of orange soda. All they had was Kola.

(Anyone heard Weird Al's song Albuquerque? (the part I'm talking about is about 5 minutes in, and if you're not a fan of dumb cartoon violence, skip it! hehe)
I said "You got any cinnamon rolls?"
He said "No, we're outta cinnamon rolls"
I said "You got any apple fritters?"
He said "No, we're outta apple fritters"
I said "You got any bear claws?"
He said "Wait a minute, I'll go check"
"No, we're outta bear claws"
I said "Well, in that case - in that case, what do you have?"
He says "All I got right now is this box of one dozen starving, crazed weasels"
I said "OK, I'll take that")

I'm thinkin' Barranquilla might dig walking tacos... (and I think it would be easy for a veg like me to substitute beans for the ground beef)

After dinner we took a walk around the park across the street. Funny I'd been here a month and a half and never gone and then two nights in a row I take a walk around the park. I'd gone the night before with G's aunt. She took me out to eat another tasty fried thing - I think it was called maribuñuelo? but in any case it was a buñuelo that I think was made with yucca and had cheese inside. Washed down with Kola of course. :-) (I just did a quick Google search and didn't fine maribuñuelo, but it appears that in much of the rest of the Spanish speaking world buñuelos are sweet - like donuts... there's that donut connection again...)

I need to load up some pictures of the baby shower from Saturday. More soon! I can't believe I only have 2 weeks left here!