(I hope this fits this community. The food communities are all about recipes, but this is more about an experience. Please let me know if I did a mistake by posting it here.)
My girlfriend and I went on a Glamping-Vacation a little while ago, to treat us to something special and relaxing after a hard year. Both our kids were out, so we took advantage of that and had a wonderful weekend in the middle of nowhere, Ecuador.
We took the cheapest option possible, so we had to cook for ourselves, or I had to cook for ourselves since my girlfriend doesn't like to cook (she recently learned how to prepare artichokes, though). I went a little crazy in the local supermarket that does carry Beyond Meat products - something that is usually a) not available around here and b) way out of my budget and only regarded as a treat.
I got 4 italian links and a package of hamburgers, plus a bag of Portobello mushrooms. I also brought some pretzel buns from my bakery, since those are just the best to make burgers.
$14 for the links, $8 for the burger patties - that's steep for Ecuador, where the minimum wage is $2,95 per hour (but exploitation is common, some people work for $1,25 or $1,50. To be fair, low work quality is also common, so "fair" is somewhere in the middle). A treat, once or twice a year, no more.
After a wonderful coffee in the morning (everything tastes better on vacation), I prepared the veggies by marinating them. One with a Tandoori-Spice-Blend that I make, the other with a Cajún-Style blend, lemon juice, oil, and a bit of freshly cracked black pepper.
We ate in the late afternoon. Since the weather was very damp, it took us a while to get the grill going - the coal had been sitting in the air too long. But with a lot of effort that didn't fall short of a work-out, we got it started, and the results were most satisfying.
My girlfriend still refers to it as the best BBQ she ever had - and that says a lot, since she's an omnivore and her parents own one of the best grill/bbq restaurants in town, so she knows what she's talking about. And, the Beyond Meat italian spicy links were better than meat links, according to her - and we have a very famous butchery around here, too.
I had prepared way too much, as always. But it served us as a late breakfast the next morning, and I'm pretty sure that Peregrin Took would be quite proud of us.
It was a great weekend, very necessary for both of us, as a couple as well as individuals. Batteries recharged, goodbye Misty Mountains, back to the real world!
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing. Any feedback is always welcome, so are questions.
More about me: My introduction post
@beelzael, you're rewarding 2 replies from this discussion thread.
I like to learn more about it. Clearly local can't pay for $14 links.
How is the "upward mobility"? Is there some of that for the locals?
Some locals can - there are a few richer families in Cotacachi, especially those who own land or owned and sold in the Expat-Boom. They can afford a lot. The regular worker can't. Most customers of those products are expats anyway, since the concept of not eating meat is still not commonly known, so the idea of meat replacement is somewhat weird to them.
Upward mobility - Not so good. There was a lot of it between 2010 and 2020, when the oil prices were high and the government spent a lot on education, especially towards lower-income-pupils. Now, that budget is almost in-existent. There are a few other factors as well, like the deterioration of the value of university titles, general unemployment due to several crisis (drug wars, energy crisis,...).
It's not much mobility, a lot of stagnation.
That is very interesting indeed!
You see, you can write about so many things.
There are ideas of multiple posts in your own comment. We are eager to learn!
I have recently created a community
https://peakd.com/c/hive-180505/created
Please feel to post these things there.
Thank you :-)
I already subscribed to that one actually, thinking about posting some personal finance and stock things. And yes, I always get ideas while answering or reading. Just have to prioritize with the rest of life :-D