What´s a Kilo to you?

What’s a Kilo to you? Living in Chile my life has switched from Standard Measurements like miles, pounds, etc... and instead been replaced with the horribly confusing Metric system of kilometers, kilograms, etc... Sometimes, the math, no matter how you do it, is astounding.

The first time I realized it was with my dad in town. God bless the man for bringing everything but the Italian Sausage to make us some true Chicago Style Pizza. Unfortunately, despite my best attempts I could not quite convince him that as hard as it was to believe, Chile did not seem to carry Italian Sausage anywhere. We went from store to store to store until finally he seemed to resign to this reality, and finding the closest thing we could to replace it, he told me to order him a pound of Sausage. I knew somewhere in the conversion from pounds to kilos we had a 1 and 2.2 and I took my best guess. “2.2 kilos of sausage please.” When the man handed me 5 pounds of sausage, I had to embarrassingly realize my calculation was wrong, 1 pound does not equal 2.2 kilos, but rather 1 kilo equals 2.2 pounds.

Well, again I ask what’s a kilo to you? This past weekend, on a weekend trip to Pomaire with my housemates Roy and Caitlin, Roy introduced me to quite possibly the most beautiful eating experience I have had in Chile. As some people have noticed in the photos where it looks like a baggy sweatshirt with baggier jeans swallowed me, I have been losing weight. I’d like to say it’s a result of me working out more, but seeing as how I have not ran since March, I must accredit it to our largely vegetarian diet that our volunteer budget affords us. There is a running joke in the house whenever someone asks what’s for dinner to respond “I think a pasta, rice, or beans dish with some tomatoes and zucchini.”

And so, getting back to the story, this weekend introduced me to the pinnacle moment of my eating experience in Chile. In response to what’s a kilo to you, this is what I can tell you: it is a 2.2 pound empanada filled with chicken, beef, onion, and olives stuffed in some of the most delicious dough, and if that were not enough, it was followed by a bajativo (a downer) that made a cold winter day a little warmer with a tasty Apple kick to it. All that for only $3 US.



I came home that night completely full, and, according to Roy, with the biggest smile he’d seen me with since I arrived in Chile. The next night, it was back to lentils and veggies, but for one day, one glorious day, I ate like an empanada king!