Mayo much?

Okay CLASSIC Latin American experience I had to share...

Today James and I were buying lunch in the local grocery store called METRO (confusing... no... just normal for Peru). Anyways, I´m filling up a little plastic container with Metro´s salad bar options - very limited by the way - and I begin to investigate the literally 12 or so options for ¨salad dressing.¨A cursory glance at the dressing names and even a couple tastes that I shamefully licked off my finger when no one was looking told me that most were all different colored variations of chili seasoning. Then there were 3 or 4 variations of mayonaise. Then there was some white sauce called ¨garlic sauce.¨I figured... okay, it could be gross but it could be pretty decent also, and I certainly am not up for putting any type of mayonaise or chili sauce on my salad, so I went for it. Salsa de ajo.

I went ahead and had my salad weighed, and went on with my Metro shopping experience. I walked past the prepared food section, gazed for a while, and moved on to the panaderia to buy some bread. I had just made my decision for a delicious looking whole wheat roll when a woman taps me on the back and says something along the lines of.... ¨PERMISO... ESTA ES SALSA DE AJO!!! NO ES MAYONAISA!!! ES DE AJO!¨(Excuse me... that is garlic sauce! Not (our beloved) mayonaise!! It´s garlic!¨ She looked genuinelly concerned and I giggled at the thought that this woman had probably been watching me and following me for the last 3-4 minutes if she was just NOW confronting me. I told her I was aware of my (apparently outrageous) salad dressing selection, and we both moved on with our lives. Except I still giggled. Only in South America would someone be concerned that i DID NOT drench my salad in mayonaise.