Food

If you eat out in Lima, you are pretty much bound to have a great meal. The food is fresh and interesting, with all sorts of fine combinations of flavors.

Eating in is a different story, especially when you don't really know your way around the pickings at the supermarket. Much of the food there is very familiar, but there are surprises, too. Feeling adventurous, I often pick out food items just because they look interesting, or attractive. Here are some examples.

I bought these thinking they were sweet peppers. They were deceptively smooth skinned when I purchased them. Of course, they are not sweet peppers, but rather the firey aji. Luckily, I figured that out before adding them to a meal.

These tubers or roots (I'm not sure which) come in a variety of colors. They look like a cross between a carrot and a potato. Since we like both, and they came in such pretty colors, I bought a batch. It turns out that they are not terribly interesting - sort of like a bitter turnip.



This happy display contains includes one success and two flops. The tiny limes are wonderful. The skin is very fine, and they are filled with juice. Great for making pisco sours, if we knew how to do that.
The middle fruit looks like a pear and smells really good. But inside, it looks more like the fruit of a prickly pear, and has even less taste.
The top two are called limon dulce, sweet lemons. Sounds promising, like a good source of lemonade. But in fact, they don't have much taste, and what they do have is uninspiring. Oh well.



Here of course is one of Lima's best offerings - the basic mango. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes - all of them wonderful. We try to eat some every day.











Peru is famous for its huge variety of beans.
We are very fond of the local Lima bean, a bigger version of the ones you find in the frozen food section of American grocery stores.
I bought these fava beans purely for looks. It's hard to tell in this photo, but they look like very pretty river stones, with swirls of color. We haven't tried them yet.





Finally, I bought these simply because I couldn't resist the name, Canario. How charming. They look like the French flageolet beans. But who knows?

... to be continued...