Foodieblog...
As I have to get up early tomorrow, I should be in bed by now. Besides, I sleep less well at this altitude, I noticed. But I can´t hit the sack yet, cause I over-ate, and I need to blog as I want to saveguard this culinary experience for posterity and my own memories.
Often when I eat, my stomach and my tongue start as allies, but end up disagreeing. My tongue wants me to keep eating as long as the food tastes good, but after a while my stomach may be protesting.
Tonight I started off with a big salad consisting of raw spinach, cucumber, lettuce, tomato, avocado, some strange but tasty vegetable called kaiwa, and other stuff. I let it follow by a kind of curry made with soy meat, koriander, garlic, vegetables, quinoa, sweet potato and yam, accompanied by a glass of red wine. There were a couple of vegan desserts on the menu, and as they were as usual pretty cheap, I took two. First came slices of orange that were to be dipped in chocolate sauce. The sauce, made with pure chocolate and mint, was the best I ever tasted. It was kind of messy to eat, and I positively ruined a napkin (all the more because I also used it to clean up spilled wine). Second was a dish consisting of apples baked in cognac, with raisins, nuts and blackberry sauce. Together with this I drank a huajspata, a warm drink with red wine, pisco (a local alcoholic specialty), orange juice and cinnamon.
Apart from the size of my stomach, my sweet tooth, and my spoiled tastebuds, I have only two excuses for this irresponsible case of gluttony: 1. it was raining very heavily and I couldn´t leave the restaurant, so I had to keep on eating. 2. twice, a beggar knocked on the restaurant door, and the wonderful waitress gave them free food. Without people patronizing this restaurant, this generous behaviour wouldn´t be possible :-)
The restaurant - called El Sol Interior or The Inner Sun, is kind of spiritually/religiously inspired. On their menu one can read: ´lo que buscas esta en tu corazon´, or ´what you are looking for is in your heart´. Good that it´s not in our stomach, cause there I certainly wouldn´t know how to find it there, at this point...

Oh, something I read in this Coelho book I mentioned. I have thought of this myself, but this guy put it nicely: something like ´...the sweetness of wine, which makes it easier for us to say and hear difficult things...´. Indeed, that is one of alcohol´s functions. Nothing wrong with alcohol, when consumed in moderation. On the contrary, it may help us to be true.