Most Delicious Reason to Cross the Border

You know us, so you knew there would be posts all about food somewhere along the way.  There was already a post all about wine, right?

So are you ready for pictures of scrumptious desserts, tall layered sandwiches, juice-oozing meats, frosty fresh fruit smoothies, and picture perfect tarts?  Fine, let me send you a list of all the people I've unfriended and businesses I've unfollowed since we moved down here.  The drool was just too hard on my keyboard.

Okay, okay, so the culinary scene here might not quite be as far up the food porn scale as all that, but we are still eating well and have been since we first sampled our way through a week's worth of Nicaraguan specialties at Carmen's house way back at the end of October.

So, let's cover some important Wh- questions - namely where, how much, what, what, and what.

1.  Where do we buy food?

The Rancho Mérida store:  We affectionately call this place 'the walmart'.  It's got piles and piles of shoes and clothes and then a little bit of everything else - household goods, school supplies, food items. Here we buy canned corn and peas, Lizano hot sauce, Lizano mystery magic sauce, cornflakes, raisins, crackers, cookies, flour, oats, eggs, onions, potatoes, frozen chicken, frozen salchichon (bologna shaped like sausage), beans, tomatoes, milk, pasta, oil. You see, they sell a little bit of everything, just like the WalMart.

The pulperia:  Well, a pulperia.  We most frequently shop at one in particular, but there are half a dozen or so in town and they all carry roughly the same stuff.  Pretty much what 'the walmart' has for food, but also cookies and breads.  Some carry the flour in small bags, some in bulk.  The pulperia is also where we source baking powder.  At first glance, pulperias look like Latin 7-11s, focused on sodas and snacks, but really they carry a ton of things.  You just have to know to ask for them or randomly ask and see what gets you a yes.  However, even asking for things you know they carry doesn't always work for me.  Every time I ask for harina (flour) I get avena (oats).  Luckily we eat both, but geez does my Spanish pronunciation suck.

The fruiteria - Fruitlandia:  A little fruit stand/shack run out of someone's house.  This is our best source for produce.  Watermelon, pineapple, mandarins, oranges, mangos, potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, chiltomas (sweet peppers), avocados, cabbage, ayote (squash - similar to a winter squash), chayote.  They also sells eggs and cookies.  We are frequent buyers here.  And their high school-aged son comes to our English class.

Margarita's:  When we want booze, this is where we turn.  Tía Margarita runs a bar/restaurant and sells beer and rum.  We buy cans of beer and bottles of rum here.  For the past several weeks, we've been a regular Friday presence, buying beers for Toña Talk, our Friday evening Intermediate/Advanced conversation class.

Toña Talk™:  Clearly the beer company should sponsor this conversation class.

We've heard a rumor that you can get the beer delivery guys to sell to you directly, but we haven't managed to try that yet.  I think it will involve chilling on the side of the road at the right time (somewhere between 1-3 pm).  We have chatted with the delivery guys at the Hacienda and at Margarita's and they seem pretty cool.  Perhaps direct buying and beer swag are in our future.  We're certainly upping the value of this delivery route for them this year.

The first time Dave went in to Margarita's to buy some beer was for a Toña Talk™/ volunteer appreciation and farewell party.  He went without me and asked for 20 beers in cans (latas).  The woman helping goes to the fridge and comes back with one can and held it out to him.  'Veinte', Dave says.  'Sí, sí, veinte' the woman says.  'No', Dave says, 'Puedo tener veinte cervezas, por favor.'  'Si, veinte', still holding one beer out to him.  Hmmm.  'No, puedo tener veinte latas de cerveza.'  'Ah', the woman says and gets 19 more cans.  Dave was asking for 20 cans and they are 20 cordobas each.  She thought they were discussing price, not quantity.

At Margarita's for 'dinner' - (l-r) Chris, Darwin, Vilma, yours truly, Théo

Outside of Merida:  Some things we have bought outside and brought in.  There are lots of things you can't get here, but some of those things you can get elsewhere in Nicaragua.  We've bought food stuffs in Rivas or Moyogalpa and brought them back here with us.  And we'll do this again each time we travel out.  So far we've brought back things like peanut butter, jam, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, spices, wine, mustard, soy sauce, nutella, tea, and coffee.

Gifts:  We've also been the lucky and thankful recipients of some amazing generosity.  The first meal cooked in our new house was fried plantains, made with plantains we were given.  We've been on the receiving end of gifts of plantains, límons, bananas, mangos, peppers, avocados, beans, and more.  The generosity is very touching.

Gleaning:  Our house is surrounded by gargantuan mango trees.  And since mangos are coming into season now that it is April, I am walking out in the 'back forty' every couple days to look for fallen mangos.  It reeks of fermented fruit over there and sometimes the fruit has been gotten to by ants or critters before I get to it.  But I've collected enough mangos to supplement several meals so far and there should continue to be more and more as the season progresses.  We also pick mandarins behind the OBS school when they are ripe.  And there is a nispero tree by the big house our landlord owns and we're welcome to go collect fruit from it, too.  Wait, you've never heard of nispero?  Brown, incredibly sweet (like candied figs), said to smell like rum.

Still, most of our shopping happens under a scarcity buying approach.  When we go buying on delivery day, we stock up.  Things aren't consistently available.  And sometimes things that are available aren't edible.  Case in point: watermelon.

We love watermelon, or in Spanish sandia.  It's full of moistury sweet goodness.  It comes with a built in handle.  It's pretty cheap - 30 cordobas, or a little over $1, each.  However, we have learned what happens if you keep a watermelon at ambient temperatures in the tropics for 2-3 days. … It ferments!  We have a refrigerator, but Fruitlandia does not.  In our early weeks here we bought a watermelon one day.  Then, a couple days later we went back and bought another one.  We put it in the fridge at home and I sliced it up the next day.  It smelled a little different, but looked fine inside and out.  I put it in bowls and brought it out to the porch.  Dave started eating while I quickly went to wash up (and prevent the ant explosion that watermelon juice spills would lead to if left on the counter and cutting board).  I came back out and Dave asked me to taste the watermelon and tell him what I thought it tasted like.  Hmmm.  It tasted like booze!  We might have been half-way to watermelon brandy, but caution prevailed and we fed that watermelon to the compost heap.  Now, we buy multiple watermelons the first day we see them and put them in our refrigerator until we are ready to eat.

2.  How much does food cost?

It's crazy cheap and we are staying well within our food budget without any particular effort.  We do eat at home most of the time, but that's mostly out of convenience and comfort, not necessarily price.

Here are some examples from our financial records.  The exchange rate is 25 cordobas to $1.

6 eggs = 30 cordobas ($1.20)
1 watermelon = 30 cordobas ($1.20)
1 grapefruit  = 2 cordobas (8¢)
1 pineapple = 25 cordobas ($1)
1 avocado = 60¢
Honey = $4*

Here are a few grocery shopping examples.

For 116 cordobas ($4.64) we bought peppers, potatoes, 2 onions, a giant cucumber, 6 eggs, and a carrot.
For 142 cordobas ($5.68) we bought flour, cornflakes, 4 cookies, tomatoes, cinnamon, eggs, and milk.
For 160 cordobas ($6.40) we bought 6 eggs, 2 watermelons, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, mandarins, 2 grapefruit, and an ayote (squash).

*This was for a 20 oz. Coke bottle filled with local honey.  A student we knew from the fall, 9-year-old Brian, lives nearby.  One morning we were sitting on the porch and he came running up and ducked through the barbed wire fence.  He explained that his dad had collected honey and asked if we wanted to buy any.  We did and it is delicious.

3.  What do we eat?

Okay, that's what we can/do buy (there are some things we can buy but haven't, like canned tunafish and sardines or tang powder in 18 flavors).  What do we make with it?  Well, our favorite dish is very Nicaraguan - gallo pinto y huevos.

Just like a real Nica, I make gallo pinto for breakfast.  Or lunch.  Or dinner.

We've also worked on getting creative with the limited slate of avaialble ingredients.  We've figured out that we can make a great curry by toasting the dry spices (curry powder, paprika, cayenne, cumin) and using regular cow's milk instead of coconut milk.  I remembered bannock, a fry bread from my youth, and we've had good success making breads on the stove (we have no oven).

This is where our culinary magic happens.

Sometimes we eat out.  We eat at Hacienda Merida from time to time, principally when we have volunteers here as it's a great opportunity for bonding with them.  Once a week we both teach on the same side of town for night class and we have a standing dinner date.  We usually go to Pescaditos and have Nicaraguan tacos or enchiladas or to Margarita's and have the plate of the day (she has some combination of chicken, beef, and pork available in a plato tipico with salad, beans, rice, plantains).  Both are delicious and both are owned by families of our students.

Dave has reached nirvana.  Er, achieved "local" status at Margarita's.  This means he can go to the fridge and get his own beers.  Margarita's is run out of her home, but it's pretty much a one woman operation.  If she's cooking, her hands are too full to get beers.  But the door to the kitchen is open, we're recognizable on sight and don't seem to be going anywhere - in other words, we're considered by many to be locals.  Dave goes back and helps himself.  She tallies your bill by leaving all your empties on the table until you are done.  He calls Margarita tía (aunt) and she laughs and smiles.

4.  What seems like a treat?

So, given limited options and different foods, things that seem pedestrian back home seem like a big treat here.

(1)  Peanut butter (we were thrilled when we found crunchy in Moyogalpa, now can we find some without sugar?).  
(2)  The hazelnuts we were gifted by school volunteers form Oregon.  (I don't even like hazelnuts when I'm in Oregon much, but here they were divine.)  
(3)  Yogurt.  (All of a sudden, the Rancho Merida store started stocking flavored yogurt.)  
(4)  Cold chocolate milk.  
(5)  Blueberry iced tea - made with a few random tea bags I brought from home.
(6)  The pizza we are going to eat at this amazing little place in San Juan del Sur in just a few days.  It's owned by a real Italian man and the pizza alone would be worth the trip over there.

5.  What do we miss?

Baked goods:  We have no oven and the baked goods here are pretty weak sauce (e.g. insubstantial rolls).  With the exception of the 1 cordoba cookies, they aren't worth it.  Plus, no baked savory foods.  No lasagna, no roasted vegetables, no baked salmon.  Dave, could you get me a rag?  My spacebar is wet.

Bacon:  We have discoverd that Cainsa, the bologna sausage company, does make bacon.  Yay!  But no one sells it in Merida.  Boo!  But we can get it on the island in Altagracia or Moyogalpa.  Yay!  Some fellow expats brought us back a couple packages when they went to town a couple weeks ago and it was a fabulous treat.  Yay!

Cheese:  So much I can't even write about it.

Tender, slow-cooked meats:  There are restaurants here that make a great piece of meat, flavor-wise.  But tough is the texture of choice.  We miss those tender, slow-cooked, fall apart when you look at them preparations.

Dave's BBQ magic:  Needs no explanation.

That's our foodscape!  Now get to work figuring out how to mail us a hot, cheesy, meaty lasagna.  Our address is as follows: 

Casa de Profesores
At Playa Gringo
From the Evangelical Church, 100m toward the lake
Mérida, Ometepe
Nicaragua

While you're at it, might as well throw in a nice Chianti and a hunk of parmesan.

This is our landscape.  No food was used in the making of the picture.