To market, to market

Saturday is shopping day for us. I love going to the Feria Campesino or local market to get vegetables and seafood. Today Berto went along. Fortunately the bus that goes by our house also goes right past the feria. Like most local markets, Castro's feria is a long shed like building with stalls on either side. On Saturdays, local folks set up down the middle with whatever they have harvested from their garden or the bay. Just outside the front door is the man selling bundles of dried kelp. Round to the back are the pick up trucks loaded with 20 kilo sacks of potatoes. Berto and I squeeze by these folks into the market hall.
In the front the sweets ladies are set up with empanadas, variations on fried pastry dusted with powdered sugar and grayish, steaming, sodden things that look like potato pancakes. What passes for a donut here explains why the Dunkin Donuts in Santiago is doing a brisk business. I hustle Berto by before he gets any ideas.
Now we are in my favorite part of the market, the homegrown vegetables. When I first saw Chiloe I couldn't imagine fresh vegetables coming from such a cool, wet land. Was I wrong! Lettuce and spinach pulled fresh from the earth this morning still have their roots attached. Carrots, onions and beets are laid out on plastic bags or bundled in their mesh sacks. One woman sets on an up turned box with a few bunches of parsley, cilantro, rosemary and three green sticks meant to be taken home and planted. I wonder how so few items make it worth her while to come to town. Berto and I try to buy from these small garden folks as they supplement their income.
Every week I get adventurous and bring home a new local food. This week I ask a lady about the blocks of dark green, semi dried leaves she is selling. She says a name which sounds like nothing I learned in Spanish 201. She offers me cooking tips; soak it in cold water, use just a little as it expands, rinse and soak again, then add it to soup, stew or casserole. Hmmm, sounds interesting for $2 a block, I'll give it a try. Given the kelp at the front door and the sea bounty of the area, I figure that I willing soon be cooking up seaweed.
Our next purchase is nothing exotic for New Englanders, a kilo of apples. Tomorrow we will reciprocate for all the hospitality from our landlady with an apple crumple. But today we have one last stop in the market, the seafood section on the end.
Here, as well there is the mix of full time vendors and Saturday income supplementers. For some reason all the fish men have salmo (salmon) and not the cheaper merluza (hake). We pick out a piece of salmon for about $4/pound. The fish men also have clams, oysters and all sizes of mussels for sale in the shell. My shopping bag is feeling heavy enough already, I pass on the in the shell shellfish. Across the aisle we get a pint container of whitefish chunks that we'll freeze for later in the week. And then for our last stop, we stop at my favorite vendor, the clam lady.
The clam lady looks like she has weathered quite a few Chilote storms. In front of her she has a small pile of picked out clams and a cracked saucer. For 1000 pesos ($2), she will mound the saucer up 3 times and dump the clams in a plastic bag. I figure she must be one of the hunched over folks we see far out in the bay when the tide is low. For me fresh picked out clams are as good as gold. For the locals here they are as everyday as the potato trucks piled high with sacks. When we first got here someone told me that the difference between being poor in Chiloe and poor in the city was that no one ever goes hungry in Chiloe as long as they have a yard to garden and a bucket for shellfish.With bags full, Berto and I weave our way out past the cheese man, the wool lady and the dried fruit man. The pet food man recognizes my yellow wind jacket and smiles. Last week I was all set to get a kilo of oats from him when I realized he was selling raw oats for horses and not rolled oats for oatmeal.
Across the street to the bus stop and we get a slight sprinkle. No one here even pulls up a hood. Sprinkles don't count when the last week has dumped close to 5 inches. By the time we get home, the sun is back out and a rainbow is on the hill across the way. As further evidence that today is turning out to be a good one, Negro (aka Satan's canine) barely lifts an eyebrow as we walk up our driveway. I have lost count how many times our landlady's dog has tried to bite me. I've taken to calling him all sorts of unspeakables in English and threatening to kick his $#@ all the way to Naugatuck. When we get home, Mike and Gabi are home from their errands so we settle down for lunch. Happy Saturday!