la comida -- the food

It´s been a week and a half, and I think it´s time I bitch a little about the food here. It´s free, so I try not to think badly of it, and it´s not necessarily bad, it´s that eating is just something I do out of necessity now and no longer enjoy.

We eat our meals in Carol´s house, and sometimes the family is there and sometimes they´re not. But they always leave something prepared for us, and we´re free to find what we like in the fridge. In the morning, I usually eat alone: a bowl of cornflakes, all-bran, bananas and milk. Sometimes the family´s muchacha, literally girl but really a maid, is there. Rosita is only about 16 years old and is a cook, maid, babysitter, and all-around assistant both at home and at the school, and she´s really sweet. During school, there are snacks for the kids, which I sometimes try. So far it´s been a cold hot dog with some cole-slaw-ish sauce, tacos (which they do rolled up like a little burrito), or a corn tortilla with honey. After school, at around 130pm, we go over to Carol´s for lunch. For two days in a row now it´s been this strange soup with rice and vegetables and potatoes. We ask for no chicken, because it comes with bones and kind of grosses me out. After that bland a meal, Jonno and I both went for something else: he made a sandwich with wheat bread, cucumbers and tomatoes, while I went the sweet route and had wheat bread with strawberry jelly. We´re all very excited about the strawberry jelly - I think they just bought it on Sunday and it´s already halfway gone!

No matter what I eat for lunch, I always get hungry around 330pm. I tried stuffing myself at lunch, eating meat and extra bread, and it didn´t help, so I´ve settled into eating half a power bar in the afternoon instead to tide me over. For dinner, which is around 730pm after the gym, it´s generally typical Honduran food. There´s one dish that comes wrapped in a banana leaf and seems to be corn, bean and some vegetables. There´s tacos, again a corn tortilla with corn meal inside and some vegetables, and salsa. One night we had spaghetti, which Jonno apparently taught them how to make a few months ago, with a delicious sauce with chopped vegetables. Sometimes there are flat tortillas with ground beef (such a treat!), beans, cheese and maybe vegetables. When they saw how much I loved cheese, they started putting it out on the table for me. So they´re trying to serve what we like, it´s just hard I guess to please everyone. Apparently one of the old volunteers really wanted to eat healthily, which is hard here due to all the corn and frying, and the family felt a little insulted by that. So I´m trying to get along and also find things that I want to eat.

In town, there are fantastic licuados, which are like shakes with fresh fruit, milk and sugar. I´ve only had one so far, and I´m trying to hold off lest it become a daily habit. There´s also a hamburger place apparently, and other places we can go for cheap food if we get desparate. I now understand why Jonno was so keen to go to Pizza Hut the day he picked me up at the airport!!