OK, so in my last posting, I established that on Sunday, I started the day pretty tired after my late night the the "Arte Pub". Sunday was originally planned to be a drive along the coast somewhere between Caldera and Huasco, but given I was tired, Caldera seemed the most likely as it is so much closer. In the end, common(?) sense won out and I decided that driving while tired wasn't the smartest thing I could do, given the amount of trucks and buses plowing up and down the road. I certainly didn't want to be having a microsleep underneath one of those...
In the end, it was a day where lethargy was the winner. I roused myself a bit more in the afternoon to go to the shops for "garam masala" ingredients, but that search didn't actually end until about 8PM when I visited my fifth supermercado for the day and FINALLY found some saffron (in a 0.25g packet!). For absolutely proper garam masala, I should've used cardamom seeds, but had to settle for the already ground version. I'd also like to have found a spice grinder or a decent mortar and pestle - the one I have is wooden and not the best. The end result of it all was perhaps a bit coarse? I ended up using it in a "middle eastern style lentil and spinach soup" and it tasted just fine to me!
Late in the afternoon, I had to succumb to the weariness and have a little siesta - my first here in Chile. I've always been a fan of the afternoon siesta, but have never quite managed to enjoy them often enough. It's a shame that they aren't as common here as they once were which pepped me up enough to go searching for that darn saffron that was eluding me!
The rest of the evening was spent on the lentil and spinach soup. I learnt a valuable lesson about red lentils. Read the instructions ENTIRELY first. My information pamphlet on lentils starts with the brown/green versions, which clearly indicates that they should be washed first. OK, no probs, I've got these lentil things well organised, I'll just wash these red ones and off we go. After I'd finally got everything cooking on the stove, I was casually reading about red lentils specifically, and discovered that it said to NOT wash them, otherwise you'll end up with a gluggy red mess. Aaah, so that's why I had a gluggy red mess. Not really supposed to happen that way. Another little lesson for me, tucked away in the "Don't do that one again" corner of the brain! Again, no great drama, the taste is probably not so different, just that the resulting soup is perhaps a little less red than it might otherwise have been.
As I mentioned yesterday, I am off to the bike shop tomorrow afternoon to check out the KTM option...
Chao,
A
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