Gallo Pinto and Rice and Beans

With only 6 months left in our term, naturally some of my thoughts have turned toward the US, wondering what kind of place we are going to live in, the change of pace (more rushed), schooling for Zachariah, what kind of work will Steve have, being close to family again, and yes, even the food.

You see, we eat a lot of rice and beans here. Daily. For breakfast and supper. For lunch we add some veggies and 3 days a week, meat.

We almost NEVER eat casseroles, because although we have an oven, it is terribly expensive to cook with the oven. It’s small and not insulated, so the heat comes right out the sides. So we don’t bake very often. And cheese here is VERY expensive. Once in a while we’ll treat ourselves to mozzarella or even cheddar (I think we’ve bought cheddar twice since we came here).

But we generally eat like Nicaraguans. And we like it. The food here is surprisingly tasty, and the boys gobble it right up. Zach especially likes the corn tortillas with ketchup on the side. His favorite dish is an enchilada. A fried tortilla with refried beans, shredded cheese, and a type of coleslaw on top. He easily eats 4, or 5, or 6 of those, one right after the other!

We usually get our tortillas from the market a few blocks down. Here you can see they make the tortillas right in front of you. There are two stations, one on the left side and one behind. The lady thought it was funny that I wanted to take a picture of them making tortillas. Cost? You can buy 20 corn tortillas for $1.







We’ve tried fish soup a few times. Here, they throw the whole fish in the pot. Here, you can buy almost all your food on the street, except beef and chicken. Starting around 6 in the morning, people carrying buckets or balancing baskets on their head, sell vegetables, milk, fruit, tortillas and fish. They yell out their wares while walking down the sidewalk. One day we heard some men yelling they were selling fish. Running to the door, we looked out and saw a small pick-up truck, driving slowly down the street while men walked beside it. We hailed them and they stopped. In the back of the truck were several large ice boxes, which contained all kinds of fish, some as long as me! They quickly drew a crowd, and after some discussion, we decided to buy just one fish for some soup. The man assured us that it was not very spiny and had good flavor. It was a beautiful fish and the man was right, the soup was delicious!

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