Because we are filming our first episodes of La Comida Aborigen this Wednesday, August 6, Rodrigo, María Eugenia and I spent all day shopping for ingredients for the shoot in a remote mercado (market) just outside Buenos Aires that I will call little Bolivia, although there is also a strong Peruvian presence. Let's just call it the little Andes!
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What a wonderful and fascinating mercado, a riot of colors and scents and sounds that made me feel for a while as if I were back in La Paz! We bought all kinds of exotic alimentos (food, ingredients) such as a particular variety of dried corn husk for tamales that is only available in August; spices, several varieties of maize, and much more.
The three of us then had a delicious and hearty lunch at a very authentic local Bolivian cafe for $18 pesos total. (About $5.75 U.S.) The waitress was thrilled that someone who spoke English was eating at her restaurant, which shocked me. But I was equally thrilled to be there. They obviously don't see many people from the U.S.
A slide show of the day and some of the beautifully colored produce we purchased for the shoot follows. Our three lunch plates are shown in the slideshow.
Looking at these photos, one is reminded that millions of people in our world are now suffering because of massive price hikes and shortages of basic foodstuffs that have begun to appear sporadically in unlikely places in recent years. America, in a sense still the breadbasket of the world, is not immune, as recent shortages and price surges for rice in Haiti demonstrate.
There are plenty of theories about the causes for this sudden appearance of shortages and surging prices, from over population to rising fuel prices, from the globalization of food production and distribution to the role of global food corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto, to the role of rampant commodities speculation that decouples pricing from real world supply and demand.
For me the bottom line is that we clearly have enough food to feed everyone on earth in spite of the current wave of shortages. And the 35 nations of America that have been blessed by nature can lead the way in making sure that we do feed everyone in the world, starting with our own people.
