The most important thing

Food!

I've gotten a couple of questions on what I'm eating down here, and thought I'd talk a little about one of my favorite topics.

The diet is primarily vegetarian here, but meat is definitely available, especially in the super-americanized areas. Our group normally sticks to casados (fun fact from my Spanish instructor: casado is the word for married, and is also used for this dish b/c it's combinations of things that go very well together). Casados vary, and I can definitely attest to that. No two are the same! Each normally has rice, beans  and a veggie. Some have had fried plantains, fried eggs, a lettuce-based salad (the locals put mayonnaise and ketchup on it, sooo wrong, and this is from someone who used to consider ketchup a food group!) or other local specialties. I've only gotten the vegetarian casado, but they also make fish and other meat casados. There is a topping, kind of like ketchup, that is ever-present. It reminds me of Taco Bell hot sauce packets (the mild one), and people put it on everything. It's really good on eggs.

Fresh fruit is readily available, especially pineapple, mango, papaya and passion fruit. At Mastatal they have a type of white pineapple. It's really good, and is less fibrous than the yellow pineapple. I'm not a huge fan of papaya, but the people who like it loooove it here. I am a huge fan of mango, and I've been eating some amazing mangoes. Hurrah! There are other unique fruits that we've been trying along the way, and fresh juices as well. I'm not a huge fan of juice, but I've been trying the juices here. They're very intense, and really good.

The vegetables are amazing as well. Not a lot of dark leafy greens, but plenty of avocados!!

In the cities the food tends to be greasy and they rarely use fresh ingredients. I've definitely appreciated staying at Mastatal and Durika, where everything is fresh and delicious. A couple of the places we stayed used a lot of frozen vegetables and milk or butter based sauces. I think they thought it would be more appreciated by us, but I'm definitely not a fan.

We've made a couple of stops at bakeries, but I haven't bought anything yet. I did try an empenada (spelling on that?) filled with a squash, sugar and spices. It was really good, but very bready. It seems like most of their treats tend to be bready. Since it's so hot, they're not really appealing to me. My favorite treat has been chocolate covered guava beads. They're about the size of a raisin and really good. I've only bought them once (we're tracking all of our waste!) but I'm going to try to bring some home for people to try. I'm usually really into sweets (*ahem* understatement?), but haven't been down here. I feel pretty good about it. I've been trying to eat less sugar, especially uber-processed, and there's no time like the present.

For the coffee drinkers out there (who? what? coffee? never!), it's amazing. I've had coffee twice, which is big because since I've quit drinking coffee it normally takes a really good brew to get me to drink it. The drip coffee is always good here, even at the random places. It makes sense, with all the coffee plantations. The coffee drinkers in the group have been really happy. Gabriel reminded us that we'll be giving up coffee once we get back to Seattle, unless they start growing it locally. Amelia and Jen have decided to start growing once we get back.