It’s a gourd! It’s a squash! It’s zapallo!

squash

My volunteer garden gave us a zapallo like this for dinner last night. Deliciously smooth and sweet, unlike others that we thought were of the same variety.

On this plant, they start out looking (well, sort of) and tasting like zucchini, then they get big and long, and even bigger, and if you leave it until the stem dries out, they will keep all year in a dry place (except that they didn’t last year).

Do an image search for zapallo and you’ll see a boggling array of shapes and colors, including some that look like pumpkins, which is how the word translates. Those with very orange flesh are called zapallo cabutia. All very confusing.

Plus that word is pronounced sa-PAZH-o here.

Related: Monster squash

¿Por favor?

Reminds me of a restaurant in Athens during my ultra-cheap travel days,
where ντολμάδες on the menu was helpfully translated as ‘stufed grep lifs.’

You don’t need a Harley to make noise on two wheels

Thursday brings the feria (street market) to Atlántida, Uruguay. While you can get this noise any day, you definitely will hear it on feria day. All day.

You can’t make this stuff up

In a country where fuel costs are among the highest in the world, and where the cost of anything with a motor is 50-500% more expensive than in the United States, someone thinks it a great idea to fly a plane blaring 15-second audio advertisements. 15 seconds because the plane is too fast for anything more.

¡Cuatro!

But they’re wearing helmets, which you’ll recall isn’t always the case.

“Doesn’t that guy know it’s dangerous to take pictures while you’re driving?”

Feathered friends

Hand-fed as chicks, these sociable guinea hens come all the way from the neighbor’s yard to peck the ground at my feet, as if they can find nothing to eat in the 100 meters between.

Even when I’m using a noisy 5.5 HP lawn mower. I stopped it to take pictures; when it was running they would let it get even closer than this before moving.

Electric company goes eco-unfriendly

The electric bill arrived today, for the first time in a plastic envelope.

Granted, typical mailboxes here are anything but watertight, but does Uruguay really need a million or more extra bits of plastic going into landfills every month?

Uruguay utility bill in plastic envelope