dclan dromomania: Feliz Dia de la Madre in Santiago, Chile!

How do you spend Dia de la Madre in Chile?? Well, your husband gets you a fresh muffin from the local panaderia and buys you your favorite cookie, Oreos, and harvests fresh grapes from a property that he had seen the day before and you munch merrily while enjoying the 8am sunrise over the mountains with your boys. That’s how!

We were heading out to the WWOOFer farm that afternoon so we spent the rest of the morning packing up and our friend Rodrigo, who had kindly offered to drive us out there, picked us up mid-morning. He said he had a few surprises planned for Mother’s Day so after we picked up about two dozen fresh lemons and some piping hot beef and olive empanadas, we headed to his house. Pia, his wife, offered to babysit the two older boys while we took off for our first surprise. Rodrigo took us to the Vega Central Mercado, a massive, four warehouse complex, where we spent the next hour and a half perusing the fresh fruits, veggies, and meats. I’ve never seen a market this large…it was bustling with Sunday morning customers, all bargaining for the best prices. There were three different types of new (to me!) avocados, too many unusual fruits to count, and the freshest clams, mussels, fish, and octopus I’ve ever seen. There was cochayuyo, a type of seaweed that Chileans dry and use in salads or veggie stirfrys and also, coincidentally, for teething babies! There was black corn from Peru, deformed kiwis that were two- and three-in-one, and arrope, a byproduct of honey that Chileans use to sweeten desserts. There were fresh artichokes (and already prepared artichoke hearts!), hollowed out baby zucchinis for stuffing, and fresh salsa by the 55-gallon bucket!! There were radishes the size of footballs and mussels the size of Mike’s hand! There were twenty varieties of dried fruits and sweetened and spiced nuts and every type of animal innard you can imagine, to be made into delicious sweetbreads. We had an amazing time walking around and looking in the various vendors’ stalls and when we had our fill of the sights, we drove back to Rodrigo’s house where Pia had our second surprise waiting, a huge table laid for a Mother’s Day lunch! She had fresh tortilla and butter and pisco sours for our first course, a giant bowl of fresh salmon, corn, dill, and caper ceviche for the second course, and fresh empanadas for the third. Of course, there was fresh fruit salad and a beautiful almond and raspberry tarta for dessert with white wine. She even had a little wooden box of Chilean chocolates for me as a gift! Over lunch, we got our final surprise…Rodrigo and his family invited us out to their vacation house in Futrono, a small town in Southern Chile, right on the beautiful Lake Ranco and just north of the famous Patagonia region! We haven’t worked out the details yet but we are going to try to visit in June. We spent a lovely day with Rodrigo and his family and then we piled in the car to head to the working farm that would be our home for the next week. We all took naps in the hour-long car ride and arrived at the ranch in the evening. We said goodbye to Rodrigo with many well wishes and plans to see he and his family again very soon.

Stayed tuned for our post of our week on a working farm tomorrow!