Food

Finding, buying, and cooking food has been a new experience in Nicaragua.  We live in a large city and can walk to 3 major grocery stores, a pile of small shops, and a number of outdoor vegetable stands.  We also have multiple vendors walking down the street with fruit, vegetables, fresh tortillas, cheese, ice cream, and more.  There is a lot available: more fruit, but different; a variety of vegetables, not directly from farmers because of our location; and a pretty wide grocery store selection.

With all this, it would seem meal preparations should be pretty easy... but it hasn't been.  We're working to figure out what foods are affordable and which are special (cereal is pretty expensive, milk isn't the same, avocados are usually very cheap, apples are very expensive...).  Thankfully we usually eat together at the office and Yolanda cooks, so we can count on one solid meal for the day!

We're also learning to cook with a small gas stove, in a hot climate.  And about the time I find something I really want to make I run into an ingredient that is not available (or is incredibly expensive!).

Today, though, I felt okay about how our meal ended up.

About a week after we arrived I planted a whole envelope of basil seeds in a patio pot and hoped they would grow. Three and a half weeks later:

The plants needed to be thinned and we needed a quick and simple meal:

Pesto! Walnuts are expensive so we tried cashews. It was good but we'll try without nuts next time.

While looking on the internet for suggestions on pesto variations I saw a post from some friends' blog (Future fellow MCC Reps).  We have mostly avoided baking, apart from a flopped brownie mix (me), and a very good baked oatmeal (Derrick).  It's just hot, the oven is small, the temperature control is iffy... so most meals are stove top.  But that post just looked so good and I had almost all the ingredients on hand!  So:

What I didn't have were chocolate chips.  Derrick says next time we'll find chocolate chips.  I also made the mistake of thinking the batter was too runny (because it's hot) and added extra oats... so not the beautiful chewy cookies from Hungry Hounds but a moderate success and bonus points for whipping up something to bake for once!


-R