Nance--Sour Yellow Cherry

I am so excited because a friend just gave me a gift of nances--something I know I will not be able to find in the US (correct me if I'm wrong!).  Nances are a sour yellow cherry-like fruit that grow plentifully here in the valley of Comayagua.   The picking season is from June to August and most people don't eat them fresh.  They are very popular as a conserve or a ferment with lots of sugar (and sometimes alcohol).  I was told that the bottled nances are best one they have set for about 6 months.  Here, people eat them straight out of the jar (like my second picture,  complete with the little pits), or use them as a topping for ice cream or snow cones ("minutas")  much like we might use maraschino cherries. 

For more info, see this link to Wikipedia :)

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byrsonima_crassifolia

La Canasta Basica

One of the best gifts that many families can get during the holidays is what's called a "Canasta basica" or a "basic basket."  This consists of basic staples such as rice, beans, maseca (corn flour for tortillas), coffee, sugar, vegetable shortening or oil, and soap.  Some might have a different combination with spaghetti or wheat flour, etc.  Since the holidays are a time of increased costs for many families, this gift basket can be just the boost they need.  I remember pitching in with a friend and putting together a big one for my future mother in law once (now we just buy her the supplies and forgo the basket).  The plastic tub part of the basket is actually very useful for many families as they are truly multipurpose--soaking and washing clothes,  soaking whole corn to make tortilla masa, holding clean dishes, etc.  My school used to give a canasta basica to all of the cleaning staff at our Christmas and mothers day assemblies which I thought was sweet (until I got a little cynical about it and thought the best gift would be paying them enough to not need a canasta basica, but that's another story).  I saw this nicely packaged version at the supermarket this week--already assembled for about $18 and wanted to share rhis tradition.

Note: the phrase "canasta basica" or "granos basicos" is also used in Honduras to refer to the price of basic goods that everyone eats and uses and is also used to gauge the national economy.

Merry Christmas and Feliz Navidad from Honduras!

Here are a few shots from the 24th to show how Hondurans get ready to party on the 25th.  I couldn't resist snapping one of the ginormous amounts of Salva Vida beer being unloaded and distributed at the grocery store.  The others are of some neighbors and friends' set up for making nacatamales, a traditional food at Christmas.

Visiting and Sharing

The pace of life in Honduras is so different than in the US.  In the US, or at least in my city, Washington D.C.,  life is centered around work, and right now I am making plans with some of my best friends for a month from now because that's when the three of us likely have time for each other.  There is not much of a culture of just dropping by, at least not for those of us who have kids and probably too many commitments.  In fact, the last time I can remember thay dropping by and seeing who wanted to hang out happened in college, when our peer group lived very close together with large blocks of unstructured time.  I started to write this post a year and a half ago (Finishing today on 12/29/14), which was my first visit back to Honduras since leaving to live in the US again, probably because this daily habit of visiting was so different from what I was living.   This time visiting is no different--I wonder how everyone has so much free time to just hang out.  The short answer,  a lack of formal work and a strong sense of community. 

One of the beautiful things about visiting friends in Honduras is that no matter what time of day it is, everyone always makes sure you are well received and fed somehow.  Most of the time (and since most of our friends are in the lack of formal work category) that involves sending one of the kids out to the pulperia around the corner to buy a few bags of churros (chips and snacks) that are 1 or 2 lempiras each.   Top it off with a 2 liter bottle of Coca-Cola or Tropical and you've got yourself official visit fare.  Informal business like pulperias make it possible to make people feel welcome on short notice ans build up the economy and relations of the community.  We have also had the pleasure ro be received with strong, sweet coffee and little cookies or bread (rosquillas, quesadillas, etc).  Alternatively we have also shared tiny plates of lunch and dinner with folks which we accept graciously knowing that we are probably stretching what little there is to go around.  Most families have a stack of inexpensive plastic chairs or stools to set out at a moment's notice to accommodate extra guests.  It's these little ways that people share that make Hondurans, despite all that goes on around them, generous and hopeful.

The Honduran "Pita Chip"

Miss you, Stacy´s !!

Ok, so is it just me, or does casabe, the Honduran/Garifuna food taste like pita chips? 

Stacked casabe rounds

(For more info on what casabe is and on who the Garifuna are, click here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/arts/honduras/discovery_eng/customs/casave/index.html )

I don´t know how this can possibly be the case, being that casabe is made from yuca flour and pita chips are baked or fried wheat flatbreads.  Every time I try casabe, especially the variety with garlic and margarine on it, the texture, flavor, and slight saltiness reminds me of pita chips, which are (as far as I can tell) unavailable in Honduras. I miss them so much!  Now, if only I could get some hummus for my Honduran "pita chips"...  :) 

Homemade Tajadas... the obsession continues!

After trying to explain to my friend, Yoli, why I love eating at the pollo place in my barrio so much (see last blog entry on Pollo con Tajadas), she told me she would be happy to show me how to make tajadas on my own, including all the special sauces! I learned a lot in the process, including that my favorite kind of tajadas are not actually made out of plantains at all, but rather very green bananas! Wow! For your Honduran cooking enjoyment, I present....

How to Make Homemade Tajadas!

Step one--Gather some friends around and start peeling the green bananas. Slice a slit in the skin lengthwise and ¨unwrap¨ the peel. Don´t peel it from the top--the bananas are almost brittle and might break, and you want them nice and long for the best tajadas. If your hands turn black and sticky, that is normal :)



Step two--Chop the peeled green bananas up lengthwise into long strips. Toss the strips with lime juice and a liberal amount of salt.



Step three--Fry it up in vegetable shortening



Step four--Remove from oil and drain. Prepare sauces and toppings for tajadas (recipes at the end of the post).



Step five--Pile on the toppings and enjoy your tajadas!! Toppings include a tomato-based sauce, mayonnaise or a cream sauce, shredded cabbage and carrots, chismol (chopped tomatoes, onions, and bell peppers), shredded hard cheese. Fantastic!



Recipes for Sauces:

Yoli´s Salsita para Tajadas
(Red Sauce)

1 small red onion, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, chopped
2 tbsp cilantro, chopped
3 chicken boullion cubes
4 oz tomato paste
1-2 tbsp olive oil or vegetable shortening

Sautee the onion, pepper, and cilantro in the oil until softened. Add the crumbled boullion cubes. Dilute the tomato paste with an equal amount of water in a separate bowl, and then add to the pan. Allow to simmer until slightly boiled down. To serve, strain out pieces of onion and pepper, or simply blend everything together for a smooth texture. Serve over tajadas.

Emilia´s Spicy Dressing

1 cup mayonnaise
1 jalapeno pepper
a few tablespoons milk, to taste
1 chicken boullion cube

Place all ingredients in a blender, adding a tablespoon or two of water or milk as desired to thin out the dressing. Blend until smooth. Serve over tajadas.

Pollo con Tajadas

I am the kind of person who goes on food ¨kicks.¨ If I try something that I really like, I will keep buying it (or cooking it) all the time, basically until I am sick of it. Then I take a break from that food for a few months (or forever, in the case of kettle corn... bleh!), and I´ll come back to it later with more of an attitude of moderation.

Right now, my ¨kick¨ is pollo con tajadas (fried chicken with fried green plantains) from my barrio (neighborhood). It also comes with a little shredded cabbage salad, but in the picture, under all those tajadas and sauce, I don´t think you can see it :P

You can get fried chicken anywhere in Comayagua, and it´s all pretty good (unless it has been sitting around under that heat lamp all day). The deliciousness key here is the tajadas. They´re not too thin (too crispy like potato chips), and not too thick (too mushy and starchy). The ripeness of the plantain counts as well. I have found that I like reeeeally ripe plantains, fried, and with mantequilla (the Honduran version of sour cream, NOT butter as the translated name would suggest). I also like the reeeeeally green plantains that they use to fry up as tajadas. For some reason, for me, a plantain between these two extremes (mostly starchy but slightly sweet), is just icky. So basically, according to my tastes, everything about the pollo con tajadas from my neighborhood is PERFECT. And I haven´t even mentioned the delicious sauces on top!!

I don´t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but my husband loves it too, so the two of us have been going there to eat almost every day! And at 38 lempiras ($2!!) for the ¨half-portion¨ you see in the picture, I think we could keep doing this!

Playing with Wordle

I just found out about this word art website, Wordle, from my online Teaching Business English class. I plugged my blog text into the data field to see what would come out. Click on the link for a full-size view!



I LOVE how the biggest word was beans :) So very appropriate when writing about a country where that is the staple food.

Enjoy, and create one of your own :)

Honduran Values Education… and Tutti Frutti!

The first course that I just completed this week for my M.Ed. (online!) is called ¨Developing Character through the Curriculum,¨ and I wanted to share an excerpt from one of my essays for the class. Hopefully this will give you a glimpse of values/character education in Honduras.

At my school, a K-12 institution, students are required to take a ¨values¨ class throughout elementary school that meets once a week and consists mostly of doing workbook pages and watching videos. Most elementary school students complain that they think the class is boring, but most teachers would argue that students need more, not less, values education. At the high school level, where I teach, lack of values reinforcement appears all the time through behavior problems and academic dishonesty. It would seem, as Lickona (1991) puts forth, that the problem is not whether we should teach values, but which ones, and especially how they will be taught. Based on my observations at school, and the readings in this course, I feel that artificially isolated character education should be included, but minimized, and that character education integration into core academic subjects should be maximized.

Exercising personal virtue can be likened to speaking a foreign language. As in a language, a grammar point or an agreed-upon virtue can be easily practiced in controlled isolation—it is modeled, and eventually everyone ¨knows¨ what the right answer is. However, out in the real world, the language of moral values needs to be spoken—truly practiced—in spontaneous, often troublesome situations. Can students live out ethical behavior, or are they only able to do the workbook exercise? Moral knowing is not enough—students must demonstrate their embodiment of good character by turning that knowledge into genuine moral feelings and moral actions (Lickona, 1991). Students must face situations in which they must use moral courage, and those situations can never truly be simulated by staged classroom role-play. A contrived, isolated, serial approach to values education does not allow students to see how seamlessly many values are integrated (Kohn, 1997), nor does it allow them to see how they are related to outside subjects or situations.

Even though in my above essay excerpt I berated our school´s values education program as being too workbook focused, there is one activity that the elementary students do every year in values class that I think is really sweet. The students get together and make Tutti Frutti, or the Honduran version of fruit salad. The difference is that it the fruit is soaked in fruit punch to keep the fruit from turning brown, plus a little dollop of condensed milk on top. Each student must bring in their assigned ingredient (the value of responsibility, and being an integral part of a group), help chop and prepare the salad (the value of hard work), and then they distribute the fruit salad to the teachers, administrators, and support staff (values of sharing and gratitude). The students usually don´t get to eat any of the salad themselves—it is purely a practical exercise of values. Now that´s the way character education should be!

My school is a private, bilingual school, so I asked a friend, Nohelia, who is currently doing her teaching practicum in a public school, how values education works there. She told me that there is a weekly, nationally-decided-upon value that teachers must at least mention but hopefully also weave into their class. The idea is that students should get the same value reinforced across the board from all teachers, and see how it fits into their curriculum (there are some problems with this plan, but at least in theory, it´s a good thing!).

All graduating high school seniors in Honduras, public and private schools alike, are required to complete what is known as TES—Trabajo Educativo Social, or Educational Social Work. This is one of my favorite things about my senior students. They have organized toy drives at Christmas, tutored low-income students in English, and planted trees, among other things. Recently, and through the leadership of a parent involved with the Lions Club International, seniors and even students from lower grades have been participating more and more with medical brigades. They interpret Spanish and English for visiting US doctors and low-income patients who receive free medical care. Students even help with organizational tasks such as setting up a makeshift pharmacy for the week that the brigades are in town. The other cool thing is that you can always spot the TES groups from the different high schools around town as most of them get special t-shirts printed for when they participate in TES service activities. I think it´s wonderful that Honduras has asked its young people to give back before they are given their diploma.
_____________________________________
PS—Here are the references from the essay (in case you´re interested!). I highly recommend the second one to ALL teachers and school administrators!
Kohn, A. (1997). How not to teach values: A critical look at character education. Phi Beta Kappan, February 1997.
Lickona, T. (1991). Educating for character: How our schools can teach respect and responsibility. New York: Bantam Books.

Making Honduran Refried Beans from Scratch

Hondurans are choosy about their beans. Although I enjoy all kinds of beans, Hondurans overwhelmingly prefer the small, red beans (NOT kidney beans) that they eat with almost every meal. They say the taste is unequaled by any other bean, and I have even heard of Hondurans who live in the States bringing back the dry beans because nothing is the same as that little taste of home. Black beans are common in the markets (and they seem to be the bean of choice in Nicaragua and Costa Rica), but they are cheaper than the red beans and not widely used.

Homemade refried beans are the best, and I´ve been lucky enough to have several bean mentors who have shown me the way (thanks, Nohelia, Ana Paola, and Karen!!). Here is the the Honduran way to make refried beans from scratch--note that like any good Central American recipe, all measurements are estimates :)

Ingredients:

Beans (about 2-3 cups) Use leftover, already cooked red beans from dinner the night before, or use canned beans in a pinch. Rinse and drain. Some people add a little of the cooking liquid back into the refried beans for extra flavor

Some sort of fat (1/4 to 1/2 cup)--most commonly vegetable shortening, but I used bacon fat the other day and it made the beans A-MAZ-ING!!!!

Onions (about 1-2 Tbsp, chopped VERY finely)

Salt, to taste, but you probably won´t need much at all

Start with a large, non-stick fry pan over medium heat. Heat up the shortening (or bacon fat!) and saute the onions until they are golden. Next, add the whole beans to the pan and find a nice strong flat-bottomed cup or glass. This is my favorite part. Use the bottom of the cup to squish the beans flat in the pan, directly into the fat. This is waaaay better than using a potato masher like some of the other recipes I´ve found on the internet. It is also extremely theraputic. It leaves some of the bean skins intact, unlike blending the beans, to give that nice, slightly chunky homemade texture. One the beans are suffiently mashed and the fat and onions sufficiently incorporated, taste them and add any salt you would like to add. Keep heating the beans, stirring occasionally. The beans are done when they stick more to themselves than to the sides of the pan. You can even give the beans a little flip. If half of the beans flip easily like a flapjack and stick back to themselves, you´ve got it!!! Flip onto a plate and serve immediately.

The mashing and flipping techniques are really best shown to someone in person, which is why I am so thankful to my mentors :) Too little fat, or overcooking, will make your beans dry and crumbly. Too much fat will make your beans greasy and icky when reheating. The cafeteria lady at school puts so much shortening in her beans that when I take them home and refrigerate them, they turn white. Eeeeew...

I know it´s not the traditional way, but the bacon fat refried beans were a big hit with my husband (and me!), and he liked them even more on his baleadas the next morning :)

What´s a party without food??

A little cultural note. So there´s this weird thing about parties in Honduras... I have noticed this at the Senior Graduation party last year, baby showers, at pretty much every work-related party and even at kids´ birthday parties at church. Any party in Honduras that is not hosted by Americans will be this way...

They don´t serve food until the VERY END.

At first I thought maybe coming fashionably late to a party was, well, fashionable. Now I think it´s a survival technique. You see, when you get to an American party there are usually hors d´oevres or some kind of buffet table. In fact, this may be the only food at the party, but it keeps getting replenished as the night goes on. When you arrive at a Honduran party, there is NOTHING. Maybe soda. Maybe one bag of chips for 50 people. People warned me when I first got to Honduras especially before work events that I should eat something before I went. I was like oh no, I shouldn´t eat too much because they will serve the food soon and then I won´t be hungry or I´ll eat too much. Now I eat a full dinner and then go to the party where I will *maybe* eat another dinner 6 hours later. I say this because I actually left one party because I was so hungry and thought I would be able to eat within an hour of arriving. I simply couldn´t take it anymore and went to fix dinner at home (the hosts were kind of mad at me, but hey, lesson learned)!!!

So the big question is... why?? There is a common saying here in Honduras that something like ¨Indio comido, indio ido.¨ ¨Indio¨ here is more used to insult oneself than to actually insult other people (that I´ve noticed) and it´s kinda like hillbilly. So Hillbilly eats, hillbilly leaves. Based on general bad manners of wanting a free meal, people serve the food at the VERY END, like midnight if the party starts at 6 or 7, because they want people to stay and keep them company. They think everyone will leave if they serve the food too early. I think it´s kind of a vicious cycle... the longer you wait to serve the food because you want people to stay, the more they just want to leave!!! So next time you are invited to a Honduran party, enjoy the company, the games, etc., but please, do yourself a favor and EAT before you go :)

Homage to Dona Azucena from Abroad

Today, my new friend Dona Sonia is going to help teach me how to make pupusas. I will blog on this hopefully later today. Sonia is my friend Elisa's new "host mom," even though we're not on study abroad or anyhing, but Sonia and her two sons have been exceedingly welcoming and friendly to me and to Elisa, who rents a room just off their back patio. Sonia runs a little Mexican restaurant out of her house (her late husband was Mexican, so she's quite authentic!), and has already opened up her kitchen and home to me on more than one occasion. I love having cooking/cultural exchanges as I think food is one of the best ways to get to know the heart and soul of people (but then again, I just really like food). In return, I will be teaching Sonia and her kids how to make Peanut Butter Blossoms in the coming weeks!

But before I go on my pupusa making adventure, I just wanted to set the record straight about one thng. I am still convinced (much to the chagrin of all the Central Americans to whom I mention this...) that the best pupusas in the WORLD--yes, the WORLD--are served at Dona Azucena's on Glebe Rd in Arlington, VA. This seems to be confirmed by the interwebs ;) (See reviews below) Why? I find them to be the cheesiest and most delectible pupusas I have ever had. Extra cheese makes everything better. So when I make my pupusas today, I will have all the good folks in the kitchen at Dona Azucena's in mind. I only hope I can pat out a pupusa like them someday ;)

----------------------------

"...when you try to open the door to Dona Azucena, you are up against a wall of people trying to get in. All the tables are full, and there's a line three deep waiting to order at the counter."
--http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/172559

"When you are starving and the rent is due, yes you can afford to eat out. It is called... the Pupusa.

I don't know how I would have made it through college at the Univ. of Maryland without this handy standby at the Flower Avenue location. Plus, I know of no other pupuseria in town that offers the bean/cheese combo as does Dona Azucena's. To me Dona Azucena's is an unofficial Washington area landmark, it introduced the pupusa to many a gringo such as myself and it was and remains cheap.

Viva Dona Azucena's!!!"
--Shahnaz S.

"I've never eaten better pupusas, not even in El Salvador!

This place is 100% authentic, from the way they're served to the curtido and salsa. It will be a huge culture shock if you've never had it before, but just pile on the curtido (cabbage) and red sauce on top of your pupusas and dig in. My favorites are the Revuelta (Cheese, Pork and Beans) and the queso pupusas. If you want to try something really different go for the queso con loroco (loroco is an edible flower from Central America).

If you are feeling adventurous for something different, or nostalgic for something Salvadorean this is a great place."
--Ana O.

Both quotes from http://www.yelp.com/biz/pupuseria-dona-azucena-arlington

Encurtido

In keeping with the recipe theme, here is another way to use up pineapple skins.. homemade vinegar for encurtido! I did this back in... october? november? And my batches are only just now turning vinegar-y. I'll continue to check on them and hopefully be able to make my own encurtido. These pickled vegetables are one of my favorite parts of Honduran cuisine :) Enjoy the article (reposted from an English-language Honduras weekly news site)!

Here are my personal batches of vinegar-to-be bubbling on the stove :)



Prepare your own 'encurtido' at home

By WENDY GRIFFIN

On the table of many restaurants are large glass jars of pickled vegetables, generally called chile or encurtido, which are placed on bland dishes like scrambled eggs and pupusas to add some zest.

In preparing encurtido, many cooks prefer to use pineapple peel vinegar that can be made according to this recipe contributed by Miriam Herrera:

2 liters of water|
2 tablespoons salt
1/2 block of rapadura de dulce (raw sugar cane, available in markets)
pineapple peels

At least 1 teaspoon of ginger, spices (especies), oregano, allspice (pimienta gorda), cloves, cinnamon, 5 bay leaves, a little bit of hot pepper.

Boil the water with all these ingredients. Let them ferment for one month, then bottle it.

There are a number of vegetables that can be added to make chili or encurtido. To begin you could try these and then vary according to your tastes.

2 medium carrots
10 green beans
1/2 medium cauliflower
3 small onions
1/2 red chili
1/2 green pepper
3 baby corn (jilote)
1/2 broccoli
hot peppers

Wash all the vegetables. Peel and cut them up. Scald each vegetable the time it needs. Place the mixed vegetables in previously sterilized jars. Add vinegar to cover. Remove the air by moving a kitchen knife around the glass. Seal the jars.

Apply the final sterilization by boiling in a little water for 15 minutes as if for canning. Open, let the air out after 24 hours, then close again immediately.

Other vegetables that can be added are pataste (chayote), small cucumbers, green mangos, and radishes.

Different vegetables need to cook different times, which is why many people prefer to make encurtido with only a few vegetables. Cauliflower (1 minute), carrots (3 minutes), green beans (3 minutes), green mangos (2 minutes), pataste (2 minutes), cucumbers (1 minute), baby corn (2 minutes), cabbage (3 minutes), broccoli (2 minutes), chiles and green peppers (30 seconds).

If you do not want to do all this work, there may be a woman in your neighborhood who makes good encuritdo. You can usually encargar or order some.

It is also possible to buy commercially prepared encurtido. But no one makes it commercially in Honduras. The bottled encurtido sold in stores is usually made in Guatemala.

Gloria Ferrera, a native of El Paraiso, explains one possible reason why this is true. "My mother made excellent encurtido. As children, we used to help her deliver it to the neighbors. Between all of us, we could have gotten together enough money to help her start a small factory to produce encurtido commercially. But we did not think big. She just sold to the neighbors. Now she is too old, and my children have to eat encurtido from Guatemala."

There are dozens of homemade foods, like traditional candies, jams and jellies, pickled foods and homemade wines that could be produced commercially. Often it is small problems like where to get jars in significant quantities, how to price the product, how to get a label to stick to glass, lack of clarity if the jars are really sterilized, how to apply for a health department registration approval number, how to apply for a small business license, what taxes need to be paid, and a complete lack of access to credit, that prevent many women from starting these kinds of businesses.

Although millions of dollars are donated annually to help Honduras support small business, Honduras has no Small Business Administration where people could go for help, information, advice or loans. There are all kinds of incentives to bring foreign businesses here, and no help for local people who want to start local business such as producing encurtidos, jams or jellies that could replace Honduran dependence on imports.

Source: http://www.marrder.com/htw/mar98/cultural.htm

Some new recipes!

I just wanted to share a few recipes that I've tried in the last few months that take advantage of the variety of tropical fruit here in Honduras! We have a HUGE mango tree in our backyard that is just starting to be pollinated and produe tiny, bean-sized mangoes... apparently in April, they will be in full swing and we will have so many we won't know what to do with them! Until then, I present you two other recipes...

Our neighbors have a papaya tree that also blesses us abundantly... half the time, when they share a huge slice with us, I can't think of what to do with it before it goes rotten. After some searching, I found this recipe that has been a hit at the potlucks we have every so often.

Papaya Tomato Salsa

1 lb ripe papaya (one small or 1/2 large), peeled, seeded, and finely diced
4 large ripe plum tomatoes, seeded and diced
1/2 cup diced red onion
2 tbsp finely minced jalapeno peppers
2 tbsp finely chopped fresh cilantro
zest of one lime
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1 clove garlic, minced
salt to taste

Gently combine ingredients in a bowl. Refrigerate, covered, until ready to serve, up to 4 hours.

My friend Ms. Karen (the one whose house and farm up on the Volcan I absolutely LOVE) showed me the following recipe, a good way to use up pineapple peelings from the fresh fruit you eat here. I've noticed a difference between the pineapple here in Honduras and the one we ate in Costa Rica. The fresh pineapple here is called azucarron ("really sugar-y") and it tastes a lot like the supersweet canned pineapple we get in the states, even though it is in fresh-fruit form. It has a deep yellow fruit. The ones we ate in Costa Rica had almost a white fruit and were much firmer and tart--like eating a sweettart candy. I got used to the acidity and got to like it by the time I left--some people liked it so much and ate so much of it that they got sores in their mouth!!! Not going to happen with Honduran pineapple. Anyway, this is a good way to reuse those peelings before you compost.

Pineapple "Tea"

Core + peel of 1 pineapple, well-scrubbed
1-2 cinnamon sticks
1 tbsp whole allspice (pimienta gorda)
1 1" hunk fresh ginger
2 qts water

Boil all ingredients together for 10-15 minutes. Strain in a colander and serve hot. Taste tart and cinnamon-y, like hot apple cider! Add sugar, to taste, but I didn't need any.

ENJOY!!!

Baleadas and homage to Doña Iris

Baleadas. Addiction. These two words go hand-in-hand.

Baleadas, as you can see above, are essentially a wheat-flour tortilla folded over refried beans, shredded queso duro (a salty, hard cheese), with a smear of mantequilla (most Spanish speakers will think this is butter, but here in Honduras, it's more like Salvadoran crema). Sounds simple, right? Not too special, right?

Well, this lady, Doña Iris, is a freaking MAGICIAN, because she makes the best flour tortillas in town. They are thin and light and stretchy and you really have the right balance of tortilla to beans (not too bready, not too beany). Also, she works at lightning speed and is really a lot of fun to watch. Out of the picture to the left is her husband, who tag-teams with her, handing her things she needs, bagging up the baleadas "para llevar" (to-go), and collecting the money. Really, the tortilla is the best part of the baleada (which is why making them at home with store-bought flour tortillas truly pales in comparison) and it really makes it worth buying from those who do it right. And Doña Iris does it right.

Doña Iris apparently started selling her baleadas, like many women in Comayagua, on a streetcorner. According to my roomies who have been here a while, she did well enough to eventually be able to rent a storefront. Now, every few months, she adds something to it... another set of tables and chairs, a fan, and now, a TV! This is definitely a testament to her success, but even more impressive is that one baleada sencilla (just beans, mantequillla, and cheese) costs 5 lempiras. That's like 30 cents. Think about the volume you have to sell to turn that kind of profit. Also, baleadas are considered more of a breakfast food or mid-morning snack. That means Doña Iris closes for the day by around 10:30 or 11 am. Think about that sales volume in only about 4 hours. Damn, she's good.

Baleadas also come in many different varieties (especiales, as you can see on the sign). You can get them with scrambled egg in them, with chorizo (sausage) , chicken, and even slices of avocado. That means for a few extra lempiras, you can come up with something much like a pretty hefty breakfast burrito. Oh, did I mention there's usually hot sauce to shake on it if so desired?

Pretty much all of Honduras is addicted to baleadas. Here in Comayagua, there is even a business called HiperBaleada that makes their money on the true addicts who need home delivery of baleadas. Their baleadas (hyper-sized) are about the size of a dinner plate, or a small pizza folded over. The tortilla is thicker and sometimes feels a little like pizza dough, too. It's an interesting concept, but I'll take Doña Iris's any day.

Here's an English-language website that has a little more info on how to make baleadas, although it's pretty easy:

http://sidewalkmystic.com/Baleadas.htm

The site also includes other Honduran recipes for your perusing:

http://sidewalkmystic.com/Honduras_Recipes_Food.htm

Happy noshing! More food updates to come :)

el Mes de la Patria

We just finished out the month of September, which in Honduras is called ¨el Mes de la Patria,¨ or essentially the month in which most of the patriotic holidays fall. Shops and schools alike are decked out in the Honduran flag, and we´ve probably had 3 civic assemblies so far. Along with teachers´day and children´s day thrown in for fun (see previous post), September 1st was Flag Day, and September 15th is Honduras´s independence day. This is also why Hispanic Heritage Month in the US begins on September 15th--five Central American countries share the same Independence Day. There was even a holiday to celebrate when the independence day scrolls were first brought to the colonial capital, Comayagua!

I have to say that the social studies department at the school has had the students extremely busy lately preparing not only the civic assemblies but especially the independence day celebrations where students put on traditional dances as well as set up ornate displays for all of the Central American countries. Of course, it was also a fundraiser for the different classes and lots of regional treats were sold. I, personally, was thrilled to have another taste of the yummy empanadas de piña that I enjoyed wholeheartedly during my semester in Costa Rica. 10th grade was representing Honduras and sold baleadas from Doña Iris (see previous post about baleadas!) and also Catrachitas (literally, "little Honduran things") which are esentially a tostada with beans and that wonderful salty queso duro.

Unfortunately, I did NOT bring my camera on Independence Day and I didn't get pictures of the amazingly impressive displays (live animals for Costa Rica! A huge papier mache volcano for El Salvador!) but one of my fellow teachers did pass along her photos on a CD, so I'll be posting those soon.