Honduran food, make up your mind

It’s kind of crazy how different the food is here in Honduras from that of their close-by neighbors to the north, Mexico. I’d say we’re all pretty familiar with Mexican food with its spiciness and flavorfulness: salsa, colorful varities of beans, green chile sauce, mole, lime-marinated carne asada etc etc. I like Mexican food a lot.

And personally, I’ve grown to like Honduran food too. But let’s be honest. It’s not as exciting or distinctively zesty as Mexican food is. Some people may even go as far as to call it ‘bland.’ We’re talking generic brown beans, rice, plantains and scrambled eggs as the standard fare. It gets the job done but it seems to lack character or imagination. The beans are the highlight of the meal, if that tells you anything (In fact, one of the biggest Honduran films of the past decade is called "Amor y Frijoles," which means love and beans... see the screenshot).

Hondurans love their food though, and simply have no interest in trying much else. And for them, spicy food is a no-no. But then there are a couple irregularities in this bland agreement that Hondurans have made with their food that have shocked me:

First of all, for a people who don’t generally like strong flavors in their food, they LOAD TO THE MAX their coffee with sugar. And I’m talking practically a 1:1 ratio coffee to sugar. 2 cups coffee, 2 cups sugar. When I visit my neighbors I can feel my teeth start to rot out of my mouth with every sip, as I secretly wince to myself trying not to be impolite. Sure lots of people in the States find black coffee a bit too bitter for their liking, but this is taking it to another extreme. Some of my townsfolk here would probably rather just drink plain sugar itself and leave the coffee out if they could.

So their behavior with coffee would lead one to believe that Hondurans are generally quite opposed to bitterness. In fact, it would seem that they go out of their way to ensure that there is no trace left of the culprit’s original flavor. But that assumption is, in fact, incorrect on the whole. The second shocking irregularity to the bland food premise is their surprising love for superbly bitter food.

At the end of the dry season, people in Honduras excitedly harvest flor de izote, a white flower that grows at the tops of spiky palm shrubs. It’s a pretty flower, kind of rounded and curvy, bunching together into grape-like clusters. But if you decide to sauté it up with onion then scramble in an egg, which is the popular way to consume the flor de izote here, you will instantly realize that your mouth begins to shrivel, never having tasted anything as bitter in your life. Taste buds die one by one and all the moisture in your mouth is consumed by some instinctive emergency reaction. Forget trying to taste anything else for the entire meal. But, from what I can tell, Hondurans are connoisseurs and relish in this flower’s intense bitterness.

Then there’s the pacaya, a medium-sized stalk that grows in the wild, that is scorched over a flame for about 15-20 minutes then peeled. Inside you eat the white and scalding hot membrane plain or mixed into scrambled eggs like the flor de izote. And it offers about the same ultimate effect: mind-blowing and incongruous bitterness.

So I guess I am left a bit confused about how to define Honduran food. Blandish, cavity-inducingly sweet, or freakishly out-of-control bitterness.

Still in Training

Hello. I’ve got a short and sweet blog entry this week! (For me, that is.)

1. Adaptation
2. Visiting Local Businesses
3. Bonfire, Cave Paintings

1. Adapting to Honduran culture. I just wanted to talk about ways that I think I am adapting slowly but surely to the Honduran lifestyle. Sure I’m still wet under the ears considering all the time I’ve got left here, but lots of things that were weird to me nine weeks ago are just part of my daily routine nowadays.

First is the food. I am completely used to and content with eating beans, rice, plantains, eggs and tortillas on a daily basis. They fill you up and I like the way they all taste together—at first it was weird mixing the sweetness of the plantains with everything else, but now it just feels normal.

Second, I’m learning how to live with and around kids. Sure, not every Honduran family has lots of kids, but many do; kids seem to be everywhere (something like nearly 50% of Honduras’ population is younger than 30!) Being an only child, I don’t really have too much experience living with young kids. But I think that my younger host siblings and I are getting along great and it’s actually been fun. We play lots of games (soccer, basketball, badminton, card games, who can make the weirdest face etc). I also get to help out with homework and English sometimes. If they start making trouble, I let the parents handle it. Win win. Also, the 17 year old host brother has become one of my best friends here in Ojojona and has been a big help with getting accustomed to the culture.

I don’t think twice about taking a cold bucket shower or flushing the toilet using a bucket. It’s inconvenient getting running water every four days, but it’s not the end of the world.

Finally, for the most part, I’m used to the weather. I still get hot, but I just don’t notice it as much. Besides, it makes my cold showers feel all the better.

2. Business Visits. As far as what I’ve been doing, we’ve been visiting lots of local businesses including a potter way up in the hills overlooking Ojojona, artisan shops in the main plaza, a tilapia farm 45 minutes into the woods on a very bumpy road, and a local cheese producer. The last made me a little nauseous, but the farm was really cool. I like how they’re making it a point to show us all aspects of typical Honduran businesses.

3. Bonfire and Cave Painting Adventure. Last weekend one of my follow volunteers had a bonfire in his back yard and we played guitar and had a good time. It’s nice to relax with on the weekend with fellow trainees. They will be a great support in the future both in terms of technical help and motivation.
Also, this past Sunday, eleven of us went on a real Honduran adventure, hiking into the woods in search of caves with wall paintings/carvings. We got a little lost because of bad directions, but it was a blast. It reminded me of Indiana Jones. We finally found the caves with the help of a local kid who lived around there. The paintings were neat, but sadly people had graffiti-ed the rest of the caves (see pic if it loads—which it probably won’t, based on my track record here). The whole thing took about five hours all together. De todos modos, it was awesome to get out into nature.

Tomorrow we’ve got our last technical interviews with our training directors in which we’re going to discuss possible sites/work.

Okay, those are this week’s thoughts. Hope everyone’s doing well in America.