Vegetables!

Today's lunch: The vegetables left over from last night. These came out really tasty.

Watermelon earlier. And two peanuts.

Wednesday Morning

Some plums and string beans this morning. Val came by my desk and took one of the plums.

Salmon night at the Friedman house

To finish up my first day back home, I went to the vegetable store and stocked up. Then I went to Publix and bought some Salmon. Joe Robert called as I was leaving the supermarket, so I invited him over for dinner, and here's what happened.

Not Pictured: Artichoke hearts, capers, pepperocini slices, diced jalapenos.

I broiled the salmon, and split it up for the two of us, volumizing the plates with vegetables.

There's plenty of vegetables left for tomorrow for lunch.

I had some more watermelon for dessert.

I sampled some cantaloupe and watermelon at the vegetable store, and ate some string beans in the car.

More watermelon.

It's not like anyone can say that I overcompensate.

For lunch... six ounces of turkey breast rollups, with mustard.

Watermelon -- lots of it.

Two hard-boiled eggs this morning.

Fruit salad in the Costa Rica airport for lunch, and watermelon for dinner.
This is not going to be very exciting for a while.

Lunch - Ecuador Airport

I am trying to ease myself back into the real world... step by step.

I ordered the Cebiche here in the Ecuador airport. It is good, but bears no resemblance to its Peruvian Uncle. This has cooked chunks of fish and shrimp, in a marked less lime-intensive juice.

I could see this being popular to people that are not used to/don't want to deal with uncooked fish. I may look for an Ecuadorian restaurant when I get home.

This is not your mother's cebiche, if your mother happens to be Peruvian.

Pizza Mavery

For our last meal in Lima Sunday night, Ed and I ditched the slot machines and headed over to Pizza Mavery.

I had a 1/4 Lomo Saltado Pizza. That's just what it sounds like: a pizza with Lomo Saltado dumped on top of it. Pure Genius. I followed up with a calzone. They offered the small, but I laughed at them. I was going out in style.

Pizza. Lomo Saltado. A million dollar idea.

 And that's it. The plane leaves in the morning. Back to eating like a sane person.

Kilimanjaro

Sunday afternoon, Carmen, her daughter Genesis and I ate lunch at Kilimanjaro. For those of us in the USA, that would be Rainforest Cafe, but with a different name and without the gift shop.

We shared an order of Taquitos. I then had the Lomo Saltado with spaghetti a la huaciana. We each had a glass of frozen lemonade. Genesis ordered the chocolate brownie with ice cream for dessert. We got three spoons, and I helped a little.

They weren't very good, but there were only a few of them

This was probably the worst meal I had in Lima, but hey, you're going there to look at the monkeys, not eat the food. Not that it was **bad** but it certainly wasn't what I am used to eating there.

The girls shared a milkshake, and just for good measure, here's me and Genesis playing with a monkey!

Oreo Milkshake

That's me on the right

Before I forget, I just wolfed down a chicken salad sandwich. No photo.

I go home tomorrow, and back to a sane eating program. Can't say that I am happy to be leaving, but I am happy to have a chance to stop being out-of-control. If I lived here, I would eat normally, because I wouldn't fell like I was missing out, if there always was a tomorrow.

Trattoria del Prati

Ed and I went to Trattoria del Prati for dinner last night. It's classic Northern Italian food, cooked by a classic Peruvian woman. They don't appear to have a web site, but here's a review of the place in English.

We started off with fried raviolis. I had one, but forgot to shoot a photo. I was still overwhelmed from lunch, so I hardly tasted it, but I think it was good. Ed polished off the other three.

My favorite word in all of Spanish is albondigas -- meatballs. The word flows off your tongue and, well, they're meatballs. I ordered spaghetti and meatballs.

They make a big deal about adding the meatballs.

Finished Product

I could hardly eat a quarter of it, so I got the rest to go. I finished it at 2 in the the morning.

Ed ordered the Fettuccine Alfredo.

Punto Azul - Other Branch

I wasn't hungry all day, so I ate nothing. Then I got hungry, continued to wait, and did the worst thing I could have done: ordered too much, and rationalized that I would only have some of each.

I went to the Punto Azul near my apartment. They had so many good things on the menu the other day, I felt like I couldn't miss out.

I ordered the jalea, which is an assortment of fried fish and seafood. Peruvian cuisine also offers a dish that's fried fish and seafood; I can't see the difference, but I have been assured that there is one. I also ordered risotto with shrimp and scallops, with the risotto being flavored/colored with squid ink, so it is black. I would only eat half of each, I swore.

Your eyes are fine; it's blurry.

Well, I demolished the jalea. I only ate half of the rice, and I wound up waddling back to my apartment, a damaged man.

I forgot... between Lunch and Dinner, Ed and I split a Chicharron Sandwich from La Lucha.

This wasn't our sandwich, but it's a picture of one that I found on the internet:

This is what our sandwich *would* have looked like,
if only I remembered to take its picture.

La Carreta

Ed and I met up with Walter Polastry for dinner tonight at La Carreta in San Isidro.

We work with Walter's brother, and Walter is pretty famous in Peru. He was on a Peruvian talent TV show ("Yo Soy"), emulating the singing style of Raphael. Walter made it to the very finals of the show, and has carved out a nice career from the publicity he has garnered. Here's a link to a YouTube video of Walter from the show.

For my meal, I started with the stuffed mushrooms. I can't tell you want they were stuffed with; they were tasty enough, but nothing special. For my main course, I had Tuna Steak au Poivre. The sauce was slightly different than standard au poivre, but it was fresh, tasty, and too much food for me. I left one of the steaks over.

I washed the whole thing down with a pitcher of frozen lemonade. Just a tad of bread to sop up the gravy, no dessert.

Here's Ed and Walter:

Punto Azul

Another place that I try to visit every trip is Punto Azul. There's a branch two blocks from my apartment, but that place usually has an hour wait; even more on Fridays. Alex and I decided to meet at their other site. It's just as busy, but bigger, so the wait is shorter.

Alex is a big fan of frozen lemonade, so he ordered a pitcher for both of us to share. I had a cebiche oriental, which was your standard fish cebiche with a sesame-based flavoring in the marinade. To follow that up, I went for the pulpo a la parilla (grilled octopus). That's one of my all-time favorites.

Here's me digging in:

Breakfast

The internet is down in my apartment, so I went to a hotel to use their internet.

So, I got to have a $15 egg sandwich. For good measure, I had some fruit, too.