yum!

traditional food in Guatemala is delicious.  it’s not all that different from what we are used to, and shares a lot with Mexican food, so there is certainly no shock to the system.  but if you like avocadoes and corn tortillas, you are in luck!

the first morning there I had this traditional breakfast:

"desayuno tipico" our first morning

“desayuno tipico” in this case was scrambled eggs, toast, cheese, salsa, fried plantains, beans and the ever-present avocado.  it was every bit as good as it looks.  another Guatemala sort of breakfast I had was eggs scrambled with tomatoes (or salsa, not sure), beans, and tortillas.  for lunches or dinners, traditional would include any combination of things like beans, cheese, guacamole or avocado, rice or potatoes, veggies, and a main meat.  and of course there is always homemade hot sauce available at every meal.  seriously, how could one complain?

the lunches up by the solar school were courtesy of Shad, an organic farmer who is self-supporting with a farm that looks more like a work of art.  he knows all about what to plant with what, and not a bit of it looks like a traditional row of any farm vegetable.  this includes herbs, fruits, nitrogen creators, swale cleaners, soil enrichers and more other types of plants than I can possibly remember.  the man is incredible and a genius.  anyhow, his lunches were entirely from his farm, including fresh eggs and goat’s cheese made that very morning.  sautéed greens, fried taro and I-don’t-even-know-what-else were some of the treats.  it was absolutely grand.



it’s fascinating to see all the fruits that grow wild in the areas around (and in) the villages.  I saw no end of wild bananas, papaya, guava, citrus, avocadoes and even coffee beans!  just growing there on the side of the path.  too cool.  and buying produce is easy and inexpensive from various path-side stands, with a fresh avocado costing about one Quetzal (12.5 cents).



photo by Tom Egel

corn tortillas are even more prevalent than avocadoes (which is hard to imagine).  they were served with nearly every meal, and in one restaurant were being cooked right before our eyes on a stove next to our table.  now they aren’t the huge, thin things we have here.  they are about five inches in diameter, maybe slightly smaller, and are thicker:  hand-formed and cooked on a flat stove surface called a plancha.  I was told that the average person there eats seven tortillas per meal.



by the way, although I ate everything put in front of me (including dessert with dinner), between all the work and the relative health of the food I actually lost 2 pounds while I was there.



bananas



papayas



coffee beans, wild all over