¿De tela o chócolo?

In this post I'm going to continue sharing my Spanish languages adventures in Medellín, Colombia.  If you missed the first installment, no worries, you can read it here:  Holo bebé, ¿qué más pues?

One of the first things I tend to do when I get off the plane is exchange money and grab a bite to eat.  Exchanging money is usually a pretty straight-forward transaction.  I'll have to blog about it so that when you have to do it completely in Spanish for the first time you won't feel lost.  In the meantime, you can find plenty of helpful phrases for changing money and everything travel related in general in my favorite Spanish Phrasebook for android, called My Spanish Phrasebook.  Alright, I digress, let's get to it.

In México I've had to show a passport to exchange money on occasion, but this time I had to let them take a huella, or finger print of my dedo índice (index finger).  Not a big deal, it just took me by surprise.  By the way, if you want to know what the other fingers are called, then read my post Pulgar Arriba. 

So after getting some Colombian Pesos in my pocket (I'll show you what those look like in a later post) checking into the hotel was up next.  I won't go into detail about that, you can read my post ¿A qué hora es la hora de entrada? to learn how to check into a hotel.  After that it was time to get to one of my favorite past times, eating.

So I headed downtown and came across a food stand selling arepas de chócolo.  

I didn't know what chócolo was, and it didn't look like any arepa I had ever seen, but it did look tasty, so I ordered one.  And it turned tenía razón (I was right), it was delicious!   

What is chócolo you ask?  Nothing but good old-fashioned maíz.

Now that we know what chócolo is, we can figure what an arepa de chócolo is.  It's what we might call sweet corn cake.  

You may have noticed the above photo is missing that white triangular stuff that was on top of arepas in the first picture.  And if you're wondering what that was, it's queso cuajado.  I'm not a cheese guy, so if it isn't a slice of Kraft American cheese I can't help you, but the definition of queso cuajado is curd cheese. 

The combination of an arepa and queso cuajado is something you have to try.  I wasn't sure if I was going to like it, but I fell in love with it.

Here's a little chócolo humor for you if you want a good laugh and a have just a little over a minute to spare. Click here to watch it in Youtube if you can't see the link.

OK, now that you've had a chance to put those Spanish ears to work let's keep going.

There's actually more than one type of arepa served in Medellín.  The other one is called an arepa tela.  I have to admit, I didn't like these quite as much, but they weren't bad.

While Medellín has a variety of foods, the most famous dish you have to try is the Bandeja Paisa.

As you can see by the photo, that's quite a bit of food.  Arroz, frijoles, chicharron, huevo, aguacate, carne and plátanos maduros.  Bandeja Paisa is a hearty meal for sure. 

I think that's going to wrap this post up.  Stayed tune for the next one where I'll share a little more Colombian Spanish and tell you about a quaint little place called Pueblito Paisa and more.

Oops, I almost forgot.

If you're interested in learning more about Colombian Spanish, then I recommend you take a look at a book called Colombian Spanish.

It's actually a very enlightening book that will help you learn to speak more like a native Spanish speaker (in any country) as well as teaching you the most important Colombian words and expressions you'll need to know along with a bit of culture.   I was honestly surprised at just how good of a book this is.



¡Hasta la próxima!

Quiero dos con todo

Once again, we're going to be talking about one of my favorite subjects, food.  Somehow my Spanish has become inexplicably tied to food, but I love both of them, so no me voy a quejar (I'm not going to complain).

If you've never had a genuine Mexican taco, then you haven't lived.  And one of best places to experience the joy a great Mexican taco can deliver is in the city of Tijuana.  If you happen to be in San Diego, it's very easy to get to there, you just cross the San Diego border and there you are.

Taco stands are everywhere in Tijuana, it's hard to turn a corner and not see a taco stand of some sort.

There are basically two kinds of places to eat tacos, those that are more like restaurants with fixed locations.   You walk up, pull up a chair or sit at a table and then order your tacos and enjoy.

And there are the taco stands (puestos de tacos), that sit on a corner and get wheeled in and out everyday.   The photo below is of my favorite taco stand. 

 

 Let's take a look at how these puestos work.  As you can see by the photo above, there are lots of people just standing around.  Why you ask?  Let me explain.

Once you've chosen the puesto you want to eat at, you simply walk up to the puesto. You may have to navigate your way to the front of the puesto with your best con permiso (excuse me), but once you get there, this is what you'll see:

Then all you do is place your order with the cook:

Quiero dos con todo

I want two with everything

 Of course you can order as many tacos as you want, I typically start with two and end up having eaten 3 or 4.  They're more tasty and addictive then you think.   Now, you may be wondering what is a taco "con todo"?  

You're average puesto de taco will typically have a collection of condiments that looks like this:

There's limón (Even though your Spanish book says limón means lemon, you'll get a lime when you ask for one) , some form of salsa (which is almost always spicy),  rábanos (radishes),  pepinos (cucumbers),  cebolla (onions) and cilantro.  Cilantro is the same in word in Spanish.  You can just add whatever condiments you like to your taco yourself.

Here's a bit of Spanish you might need.

If you want to know how spicy the salsa is you can ask:

¿La salsa es picante?

Is the salsa spicy?

If you want to sound a little more Mexican, then you can say?

¿La salsa pica?

Is the salsa spicy?

You'll get one of two answers back:

Sí pica

Yes it's spicy

Or 

No, no pica

No it's not spicy

It's the second answer you need to be worried about.  Sometimes when they say the salsa no pica, it really doesn't.  Sometimes it means the person you asked doesn't consider it to be spicy.  Big difference.  You've been warned, let's move on.

When I order I keep my tacos pretty simple.  

Dos de carne con cebolla y cilantro

Two beef tacos with onion and cilantro

Here's the end result:

Another condiment I nearly forgot about is aguacate (avocado). Aguacate is practically a staple in Mexico, but I'm not a fan of it.

Now that you've got your taco, you simply take a step back and enjoy.  You can eat them right there in front of the puesto.  Take your time, there's no rush, they even offer refrescos (sodas).   Still hungry?  Order a few more. That's why you always see so many people standing around.

Once you're all done, you pay for your tacos (roughly $1.25 each) and get on on with the rest of your day.  Or night.

Ah, there's one other thing I forgot to mention.  Aside from tacos de carne, you can order tacos al pastor.

Do you see that big hunk of meat?  That is the where tacos al pastor come from.  When you refer to tacos al pastor you're referring to roasted pork.   The pork is being cooked on what's called a trompo, which you can think of as a rotisserie.

Here's a closer look:

The meat is sliced off of the trompo into the tortilla:

And when all is said and done you have a delicious looking taco:

Most taco stands offer only carne or al pastor, but there are stands that offer other types of tacos.

A close look at the sign reveals that you can order pechuga de pollo (chicken breast) and cabeza de res as well.  Cabeza de res is the meat that comes off the skull of the cow.  Typically you'll see more of a variety of tacos in the restaurants that serve tacos, like tacos de ojo (eye) or de tripa (intestines).   I don't think I'll be reporting on the specifics of those anytime soon.  Well, more like never. 

If you've been intrigued by the street tacos of Tijuana, you're not alone.  In fact, you're in very good company.  Rick Bayless has talked about how great the tacos of Tijuana are as well.

If for some reason you can't see or play the video, here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86cCss_VkCw

There you have it, everything you need to know to enjoy street tacos in Tijuana or any other part of Mexico.

There are few more things I want to share with you about the street food of Tijuana, so stay tuned.

Lastly, if I haven't mentioned it before, you can finally follow this blog on Facebook.

¡Hasta la próxima!

¿Vas a poner la maría?

If you missed my first two posts about my Costa Rica adventures, you can read them here:

1.  Tienes que cancelar la entrada
2.  ¡Pura Vida!

Let's see if I can wrap things up in this post.  So far I covered the language and now it's time to talk about my second favorite thing, comida.

When I travel the first thing I usually want to do when I get off the plane is find someone to talk to in a local bar and have a beer.  So let's start with what's probably the most popular beer in Costa Rica:

I'm not huge on beer, it's more of something I do on vacation.  But I have to admit, it wasn't bad. Although I preferred the Imperial Silver:

You can probably tell those are photos I got off the internet.  As many of those things as I drank you'd think I would have taken my own photos.  Oh well.

Costa Rica is famous for it's casados.  A casado is what I'm going to call a combination plate for lack of a better word.  You get some type of meat and a couple of sides.  Here's one I tried:

As you can see I ordered pescado (fish).  And to be specific, it was Corvina (Sea bass).  The other items on the plate are arroz, frijoles, plátano maduro, ensalada and a limón madarin.  I have to to admit, it was ¡muy rico!

By the way, muy rico literally translates to "very rich" but when it comes to food that's a very common way to say it's "really good".

¿Cómo está la comida?
Está muy rica

How's the food?
It's really good

Even the fast food chains serve casados.

Costa Rica is also very famous for it's Gallo Pinto.  Gallo Pinto is a traditional Costa Rican breakfast food.  Here's a photo of what a breakfast of Gallo Pinto might look like.

I'm ashamed to say I never tried the Gallo Pinto.  Oh well, that's my excuse for another trip to Costa Rica.  I did however, try a lomito.

Lomito isn't exclusively Costa Rican, nor is it anything particularly Spanish.  It's the word the waitress told me they use for steak in Costa Rica.

There are a lot of good places to eat in Costa Rica, you can find lots of little restaurants walking up and down the street.  And these little restaurants are called Sodas.

 All this talk of food is making me hungry.  It's time to change subjects.

The last thing I'm going to talk about is taxi's.  The streets of San Jose are flooded with these little red cabs.

The meter is called a taxímetro.

Por favor, ponga el taxímetro
Please turn on the meter

You may need that phrase may often than you think.  It will keep the taxi driver honest.  And speaking of honest cab drivers, there are people that moonlight as cab drivers that don't have a taxímetro.  These so-called cabs are called piratas and aside from the fact they aren't necessarily safe, you're going to end up paying more.

The taxímetro is also called La María.

¿Vas a poner la maría?
Are you going to turn on the meter?

And that's it, we're done!  At least for today.  There's one more thing I want to share with you but it will have to wait for my next post.

Oh, before I go, you may remember I mentioned plátanos maduros earlier.  If you don't what those are, then read my below posts.  And if even you do know what they are, you still probably want to read these posts because you might just be surprised at what you learn.

1. ¿Tostones o amarillos?
2. Banano-Banana-Guineo-Plátano


¡Hasta la próxima!

Está curada

Every time I go to Mexico, I learn something new.  The things I learn are like that box of chocolates Forest Gump talks about, you never know what you're going to get.  Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's just interesting and fun.  The one thing I have learned however, is that no matter how strange or useless I may think a word or expression is, I always end up hearing it again later on.  With that said, let's get started.

Está curada

Curada means to be cured, as in curing meat.  It also means to cure someone of something, like an infection.  Except in this example, that is.

Está curada
It's cool

Ese coche está curado
That car is cool

Tu camisa está curada
You shirt is cool

A few related expressions would be:

Que padre, que chido, que bien

It's my understanding that this is an expression used in Northern Mexican, especially in Tijuana.  Toss it around with your Mexican friends and see what happens, I'll bet it leads to a few laughs, a great conversation and someone asking you, "where did you learn that?"

Up next we have the word chiloso.

¿Está chiloso?
Is it spicy?

And by spicy I mean spicy hot.  Here are a few other related terms:

Enchiloso is another word for spicy.  Enchilar is to season food specifically with chili's.  I'm not sure how wide spread these words are in Mexico much less the Spanish speaking world, but everyone should understand the words picante and pica.

¿Está picante?
Is it spicy?

¿Pica mucho?
Is it spicy?

So much for my adventures in food.  Surprisingly the next word I'm going to tell you about I learned while checking in to my hotel.  It's not much of a story, but here's what happened.

After I finished checking in, the young lady behind the desk turned on the intercom and called for botones.

Instantly I thought, buttons?  OK, a half second later I realized she wasn't randomly screaming out buttons in the hotel lobby.  No one responded to her, so I wasn't able to figure out what the heck she was talking about.  I had to wait until I got to an internet connection to solve that riddle.

Botones simply means bell hop.  Now you won't have the same stupid look I had on my face when I heard this.

By the way, if you're not familiar with the Spanish you need to check into a hotel, read my entry,
¿A qué hora es la hora de entrada?.

As a tourist, I take a lot of taxi's to get around.  And I learned long ago that in Spanish you use the verb tomar to talk about taking a taxi.

Tomamos un taxi
Let's take a cab

Too bad my Spanish books never told me there's more than one way to catch a cab in Spanish.

So there I was telling someone that I was going to take a taxi, and I'll never forget the answer I got.

En México no tomas un taxi. Agarras un taxi.

Agarrar is the verb, and it's typically means to grad or to hold on.

¿Dónde puedo agarrar un taxi?
Where can I catch a taxi?

Agarra un taxi, no es caro
Grab a taxi, it's not expensive

After that, I heard people using agarrar to talk about catching taxi's and buses every time I turned around.  You can also coger a taxi, but to my knowledge this isn't widely used in Mexico, but it is most certainly understood.  And don't worry, even though many people in Mexico use agarrar to talk about catching a cab, many people use tomar as well.

Before I let you go, you may have noticed the new About Me button at the top of the page.  Or maybe not.  Anyway, if you've ever been wondering about the man behind the curtain, err, blog, you can simply click on that button to get the answers to your deepest, darkest questions about me.  Or you can just click here.  And be sure to follow my other ramblings, Helping You Learn Spanish and No Seas Pelongoche.  Although I must warn you that No Seas Pelangoche is for those of you who want to know all about bad words in Spanish.

That's it for today!  I hope you learned something new.

¡Hasta la próxima!

¿Unos mates?

I've recently become friends with an Argentino - a man from Argentina.  He's a really nice guy and he's been teaching me a lot of Spanish as well as some things about Argentina.  In fact, we even went to an Argentinian restaurant, which is the whole reason I'm writing this entrada.

Take a look at the photo below.  Once I saw this, I knew I had to write something about it.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you.  That is a pata de vaca, or cow hoof.  Much to my surprise, this is also a pata de vaca:

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about plants, so let's get back to the more interesting of the two.

Let me show you one more photo.  Why?  I don't know, for some reason I'm fascinated by this thing.

Ok, now that I've gotten that out of my system I'm ready to move on and explain what cow hooves have to do with Argentina.

So, what do cow hooves have to do with Argentina?  Nothing really.  This pata de vaca is simply a fancy (or creepy) cup for drinking mate.

Argentina is famous for mate.  What is mate you ask?  The simple answer is tea.  But the simple answer isn't good enough for us, so let's get to the real answer, starting with our vaca de pata.

The vaca de pata, while it is rather bizarre looking, is used to drink the tea.  And this is actually what's called mate.  Mate is the name of the "cup" used to drink tea.

Here's a photo of a more traditional mate:

What are mates made of you ask?  OK, maybe you didn't ask, but I'm going to tell you anyway.

Los mates pueden ser de calabaza, alpaca, madera, plata, hueso caña, y también los hay de plástico, vidrio, metal, loza

Mate can be made from pumpkin, pewter, wood, silver, calf bone, and also from plastic, glass, metal, and ceramic

Traditionally mate is made from pumpkins.  I don't know much about that process, but I do know how to search YouTube and I found this video you can watch for a short lesson on como hacer y curar un mate.  Get those Spanish ears ready!

Now that we've established that mate is actually what you drink the tea from, we need to talk about the tea itself, which is called yerba mate.

Yerba mate comes from a tree that looks like this:

When it's ready to be put in your mate it looks something like this:

Brewing yerba mate isn't quite as straight forward as making some good old fashioned Lipton ice tea.  The short version of the story is that the yerba mate goes in the mate, then you add hot water.

I mentioned hot water; luckily Argentinos heat up water the same way we do, by using a pava.

Pava means kettle, as in a tea kettle.  You may also hear it called a tetera.   And yes, pava also means turkey.  Technically when talking about turkeys a pava is a female turkey, and pavo is a male turkey, but we're not here to talk turkey (bad pun, I know).

 My explanation of the mate making process is far from exact, so here's a quick video that explains everything.

OK, so now we know the technical differences between mate and yerba mate.   If you watched the video, you may have noticed that the leaves and the water are mixed together.  It doesn't seem like a very tasty beverage.  You may have also noticed something that looks like this:

It's called a bombilla.  You put the bombilla into the mate.  If you look closely at the bottom of the bombilla (the gold piece), you'll notice several little holes.  The holes are used to filter out the yerba mate leaves leaving you with the wonderful flavor of the tea.

Drinking mate in Argentina is like drinking sweet tea in the south, it's a tradition, virtually a mandate.

When you walk into a friends home in Argentina, the conversation might go something like this:

Hola, ¿unos mates?
Hi, tea?

!Como no!
Of course

¿Dulce o amargo?
Sweet or bitter

Como tomes vos
However you drink it

Don't let the word vos confuse you, it's just another way to say tú.  It's called voseo, and that's a topic for another post.

Well, that's it.  Now you know a little bit about drinking mate.  Oddly enough, despite having been to an Argentinian restaurant and having learned so much about mate, I actually didn't get try any.  They didn't have any for the customers, just their own personal stash.  Go figure.

¡Hasta la próxima!

¡Vamos por un chimi!

In my last post about my adventures in Santo Domingo, I made a reference to an unnamed place where my friend Hector took me to grab a bite to eat.  Well, it's time to name this unnamed place and tell you exactly what it was I ate.

The place is called La Markesina, and they specialize in serving chimi's.

What's a chimi you ask?  This is a chimi:

To the naked eye, it looks like any old hamburger.  Well, as far as I'm concerned it's probably the best damn hamburger I've ever had.  This thing could easily out sell the Big Mac if you ask me.

Anyway, my personal taste buds aside, a chimi is the Dominican version of a hamburger.  It's full name is chimichurri, not to be confused with the Argentinian salsa of the same name.

Let's talk a little more about La Markesina.

La Markesina is a very popular place in Santo Domingo, but it's not a regular hamburger place like here in the US.  It's an outdoor "restaurant" if you will.  Actually, think of it as more of a puesto de hamburguesas - hamburger stand.

I was only thinking about stuffing my face when I was there, so I didn't take a photo of the place, but luckily I found some photos on their Facebook page.  We'll get to the pictures in a minute, let's talk about the process of getting your hands on one of these delicious hamburgers.

First you have to place your order.  The menu is pretty extensive.

I had the #4, El Doble Full de To' or The double with everything.  To' is short for todo.

After you decide what you want, you give your order to the guys working the grill.

Once your order is in, you have a seat and they bring your food to you when it's done.

As you can see, the seating is outside.  You basically just hang out and shoot the breeze.  At night it's a virtual party.  People are everywhere, not to mention the music.  If the music isn't coming out of a boom box then it's coming out of a car stereo.  You can even have a nice cold beer while you're relaxing and enjoying your chimi.

I gotta say, if you go to Santo Domingo, La Markesina is place you just have to go to.  If even if you don't, you have to try a chimi, no matter where you get it from.  Add it to your list of things to do, you won't regret it.

You can find them on Facebook if you want to take a closer look at what they have to offer.

https://www.facebook.com/LAMARKESINA

While the chimi was probably the highlight of my food adventures, there was one other thing that really got my attention, and it's called a yaniqueque.

I saw my first yaniqueque on the beach in Boca Chica, which is about an hour away from Santo Domingo.  You may know a yaniqueque as a good old Johnny Cake.  Personally I had never heard of them in English either.  Anyway, people were walking around the beach selling them all day long.

After you buy your yaniqueque, add ketchup to taste and have at it.

I have to admit, my trip to the beach was pretty interesting.  Aside from trying a yaniqueque, I tried coconut milk straight out of a coconut for the first time, and I believe I even saw a few sanky panky's appling their trade.

What's a sanky panky you ask?  Well, a sanky panky is a guy trying to find female tourists willing to pay him to spend time with her and wine and dine him.  Some sanky panky's are looking for something even bigger, like finding a woman willing to marry him and take him back to her country.  In fact, there was even a very popular Domican movie about sanky panky's, not surprisingly called Sanky Panky.  It's in Spanish, and it's kinda cute.  If you've got a few hours to kill and want to practice your Spanish check it out.

That's it for now.  I've got one more post to make to bring you 100% up to speed on my Dominican adventures, so stay tuned!

¿Cono o vaso?

Yes, it's that time again where I share some Spanish with you that I learned while I was out and about stuffing my face.

I just recently got a new job, and luckily there's a Mexican restaurant just a few minutes down the street.  Only this isn't just any old Mexican restaurant.

So what's different about this place you ask?  Well, let's start by explaining what a few of those words on the letrero (sign) mean.  A taquería is a place that specializes in tacos, although many of these restaurants (including this one) sell much more than tacos.  I actually talked about taquerías in my last post.  If you missed it, click HERE.

Now let's talk about what a paletería is.  A paletería is place were they sell paletas.  OK, sorry, I know that didn't explain much of anything, but this probably will:

And yes, those are my fingers, just in case you were wondering.

Now you know a paleta is a popsicle.  But paleterías don't just serve popsicles, they serve popsicles made of fresh fruit, and man do they taste good!  You'll find all different kinds of flavors, like durazno (peach), sandia (watermelon), fresa (stawberry), melon (melon), mango (mango), mango con chile (mango with chile - it's supposed to be spicy but I've never tried it) and a ton of other flavors.  Sandia is my favorite.  Take a look at what's in the fridge:

To actually order one of these tasty treats, you can say something like:

Quiero una de fresa
I want a strawberry one

Deme una de sandia
Give me a watermelon one

Una paleta de melon
One melon popsicle

Don't forget the "por favor", you can never be too polite.

It's also fairly typical for a paletería to sell helado, which is ice cream for us English speakers.  And it should come as no surprise that Spanish also has a word for an ice cream shop - heladería.

Speaking of ice cream, here are a couple of other words you should know if you plan on ordering ice cream in a paletería or heladería.  But first, take a look at this video.  I probably won't need to explain much of anything after you watch it.

Cono - You've probably guessed that this means cone.

Vaso -   Technically this means glass.  It could also be used to ask for a cup made of plastic, styrofoam or  otherwise.  And obviously for a cup of ice cream, even if the cup is actually a bowl. And you will probably see the words taza or copa as well.

And just to be thorough, an ice cream scooper is called a cuchara para helado.  Or a pala para helado.  Don't be surprised if there are other words for it as well.  It's not uncommon for different Spanish speaking countries to use different words.

That's it for today.  If you're still dealing with those hot summer days, run out to the nearest paletería or heladería and use your new Spanish vocabulary to get a nice refreshing helado or paleta to cool off!

And no, Burger King is not giving me a kick back for posting their video. I wish they were.

¡Hasta la proxima!

Vamos a una lonchera

I love Mexican food.  And as you all know, there are a ton of great Mexican restaurants that can be found all over the country.  But there are also some great places that serve Mexican food that you may have overlooked.

Have you ever seen one of these?

We typically call  these mobile restaurants taco trucks, but they're actually called loncheras.   I'm not sure if this a Mexican term or not, but don't be afraid to use it. If your friends aren't familiar with the term you can have the honor of teaching them some Spanish.

On a side note, this is also a lonchera:

That's right, a lonchera is also a lunch box.  We're not here to talk about  that type of lonchera today, but if you want to take a walk down lunch box memory lane, click here to see a great collection of loncheras retro - retro lunch boxes.

Let's get back on track.

If you've never eaten at a lonchera, you've been missing out.  Depending on where you live, finding a lonchera can be like searching for hidden treasure, but once you find one you won't be disappointed.

So what does a lonchera serve you ask? A little bit of everything.  Here's a fairly typical menu:

Personally I almost always go for a torta or a trio of tacos - lengua, pollo and barbacoa.

Enough about my food interests.  Maybe I'll talk about that in another post.

A lonchera may also be called a taquería, but a taquería can be a lot more than a taco bus.  

In general, a taquería is a restaurant that specializes in tacos.  The taquerías that I've seen often offer other items, but tacos are their primary business. Here in the US a taquería typically looks like a regular  restaurant, but when you're walking the streets of Mexico they might look something like this:

There's also another kind of restaurant you can find in Mexico, a lonchería.  A lonchería is a place you can go to have lunch.

When you're on the go in Mexico and don't have time to sit down and eat, don't worry, you don't have to go hungry.  A quick stop at a puesto de tacos (taco stand) will take care of that hunger.

OK, now I'm getting hungry so it's time to wrap this up.  But before I go I want to share one more thing.

Our Spanish books only give us two options to tell someone that we're hungry.

Tengo hambre
I'm hungry

Tengo mucho hambre
I'm very hungry

Well, yeah, those work and get your point across, but here are a few more ways to say you're hungry that are a lot more fun.

Me muero de hambre
I'm starving

Me estoy muriendo de hambre
I'm starving

The second version of "I'm starving" is a more literal translation, but I think the first version is more common.  Either way, they both work.

Tengo tanta hambre que puedo comer una vaca entera
I'm so hungry I could eat an entire cow

Con esta  hambre me puedo comer una vaca entera
I'm hungry enough to eat an entire cow

Yo con esta hambre y hay fila en la cafeteria
I'm so hungry and there's a line in the cafeteria

Traigo un hambre que parecen dos
I have a hunger that seems like two

This last one just doesn't make sense when you translate it literally.  With that in mind, I'll give you a translation that more or less expresses the same idea.

Traigo un hambre que parecen dos
I'm hungry enough to eat for two

That's it for today!  Go out and grab yourself a bite to eat at your favorite lonchera and enjoy!