I am sitting here in the apartments on a semi-lazy Saturday after making my final move to the apartment I am going to live in for the duration of my stay in Cofradía. To make a long story short, the teachers who were training us were living in The Guy's Apartment (I call it that because all of the men will be living there as of tonight) and so for a week we were spread out amongst the extra beds on the floor, not the actual floor, rather floor 3 of the building. But now the trainers are gone and we have spent the better half of today cleaning up the apartment to make it sanitary before we move in. I defrosted a freezer for the first time--now we have a clean fridge. I swept the same floor about 13 times, and there is still dirt lingering--this is Hondo. Now we have the cleanest rooms in BECA...for about 2 more days. After a days worth of scrubbing, mopping, and the occasional pineapple break, I am writing this blog just before I go hop in the pool.
However, the title of this post is not "Dirty Apartment," it is "The Gourmet Honduras" and so I will be talking about food, gasp! As is tradition for any Balser expedition, the local cuisine must be addressed in full detail. So I want everyone to brainstorm as many ways as you can think of to combine tortillas (both corn and flour), beans, rice, cheese, and avocado. Are you thinking hard? How many edible combinations did you think of? I assure you that you have yet to think of them all. Even I am surprised when I see these same ingredients miraculously appear on my plate in a slightly different arrangement and most always with a different name. I mean, come on, who are these people trying to fool? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Only these roses usually cause digestive problems. I am afraid to report that Honduras lacks in the culinary variety that I may have hoped for. I am, however, now addicted to fried plantains and have started to make them myself, and I am able to have a fulfilling dinner of one of the aforementioned combinations for only $1.30. The real gourmet Honduras happens 5 nights a week, alternating between the volunteer house and the apartments.
The first week in the apartments was also the first week of communal cooking and I am pleased to report that I have not been disappointed. It has actually been quite a relief to have some semblance on American style food with the limited resources we have had. We are still in the team trial phase of figuring out the final cooking teams, but every meal has been fulfilling. One night we had a mediterranean theme, the next night stir-fry, my night we served a southwest style bean, corn salad on top of tortillas with melted cheese, the closest thing we could find to mozzarella, and another night we had breakfast for dinner when a team successfully attempted pancakes. Needless to say I have been happy to have a variety of food styles and a variety of vegetables.
So far my diet has been strictly vegetarian in the house/apartment. We are given a food/house needs stipend every two weeks. This stipend adds up to about $22 a person for two weeks. Part of this stipend in automatically taken out and given to the communal dinner fund. Every night we eat together our food budget is about $10-11 for the whole group. That works out less than $1 a person per night to eat. This budget is tight, but entirely do-able, assuming you do not buy any meat. Fruits and vegetable are very cheap here and pooling our money together for many expenses goes much further than buying individually. Most nights we have enough money to have a good dinner and some type of fruit for dessert.
I had a feeling I would become somewhat of a vegetarian while I was here so the no meat policy has not bothered me in the slightest. Besides, I end up getting some type of meat for lunch 3-4 days a week (this will also change once school starts). For now though, I will continue to experiment with my ability to make typical Honduran foods and will report back any successes, or failures, I may have on the way.
I think my stomach is starting to grumble. I'm going to go make some tajadas (fried plantains).
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