Let's talk about food

The good:

     For starters, you'd better like rice if you move to Nicaragua, and it's good that we do. Almost every lunch and dinner we've been served at Cinafe, Fortress of Hope, or out at a restaurant, is served with rice. It's a good, inexpensive filler and goes with basically anything you put alongside it. For example - black beans, scrambled eggs, red beans, cooked potatoes & carrots, chicken, beef - we've had all of these things multiple times with our rice. We know it's only been a month and we've got many more meals to go, but for now, we're still really enjoying eating a ton of rice and whatever comes with it. 

     As we've said in previous posts, we've been enjoying going out to eat different times throughout the week because the local food is very inexpensive here, that is; if you go to a small open-air restaurant beside the road. The other week at our Spanish school, we saw one of our teachers leave around lunchtime and come back about 10 minutes later with a huge Styrofoam to-go container filled to the brim with what looked like an awesome meal. We asked her about it and she told us that she got her food from a woman down the road who makes food in her house to sell. [It's very common here for families to make food in their homes and sell it for very little.] She told us where to go, so we did the next day. We walked down the road from school, turned the corner, and went into a house. It didn't look at all like a place to get food, no sign on the outside or anything of the sort, and if it had been just the 2 of us walking, I don't think we would have found it nor would we have had the confidence to just walk in someone's home. However, we actually started walking right behind 2 other teachers from our school and we followed them right into the house. The lady there gave us her selections for the day and we each left with a tray full of shredded beef, lots of rice, a small side of black beans, a tangy coleslaw salad, and a madura (ripe banana cooked to perfection with a very sweet taste). All this for only 50 cordobas a person, which is equivalent to $2.00US. Lauren was explaining how a meal this large in the states would easily cost between $8-10.00 at a restaurant. All that said, it's hard not to stop by local places and take advantage of a well cooked, Nicaraguan meal. Especially since they even cook the rice differently here and we don't where to start. We've heard about the specific way to make rice but until we learn, we'll enjoy buying it locally.
*Picture below of our meal

The bad:

     It's hard to say "the bad" about the food here in Nicaragua. We really love it all. Obviously, there's one thing or two that's not our favorite, but we'll eat it anyway. So instead of "The bad", we're going to call it "The different". We really are enjoying the change in diet here. The only things that we miss, or shall we say that Lauren has observed, is the availability of good, green vegetables. Nicaraguan meals generally don't have many vegetables. We're not sure if you'd ever find a side of broccoli here. We'll keep looking. Lauren just WISHES we could at least buy some green beans at the store, steam them in water with a dash of salt and pepper, and a little bit of butter. But we can't. So for now, Lauren will settle for telling her wishes to anyone who is reading this and we'll call it good. As for food in general, we've been able to find almost everything we want and need at the local grocery store, La Union, similar to one you might find in the states

. It has lots of familiar brands, which is nice as we're adjusting to many not-so-familiar things.

     However, the other day we tried making pizza at home here for the first time, like we often did in Virginia. Lauren thought she bought all of the correct ingredients like flour, cheese, meat, onion, peppers, sauce, etc., but when we went to make pizza for dinner on Sunday, we found that the flour we bought to make the dough was corn flour, only meant to make tortillas and other traditional breads. We used it anyway. We found that our package of plain, ground up sausage we were planning to cook was actually chorizo, a different type of sausage with some tangy seasonings. We used it anyway. We opened our package of "mozzarella" cheese, smelled it and gave a taste test, only to find that it actually tasted a lot like a different local cheese we didn't care much for. We used it anyway. Our pizza actually turned out to be edible but nothing like the homemade pizza we'd come to master back in Virginia. Like any new place, there are things to learn and new things to try. Got a hankering for some Nica rice? Come on down to Managua.

Until then, make it a great day,
Lauren & Mitch