"Nuestra vida es la comida" Engels tells us. Life is food. Sounds good to me! Engels is our host in Jinotepe, a small town in the department of Carazo. We're his first guests so he was a bit hesitant at first but once we arrived, his family immediately welcomes us, offering us food, shelter, and kindness all around.
So the food. Our introduction into Nicaraguan food began with Miriam, Engels partner, a wonderful and brilliant Austrian gal. She started our day with pinolillo, a drink made of ground cornmeal, water, cacao and spices, and which Engles' family makes from scratch at home.
Miriam hands us a plate with soft wheat bread and chunks of cheese and papaya. After that we had some delicious dark coffee from Jinotega, that Engels mom said is the best in the country. Even as good as the coffee was the conversation we had while drinking it with mom, the housecleaner (who is so close with the family I thought she was mom's sister) and Miriam. We talked about how cheap and good food is in Nicaragua and how in the United States the only things that are cheap are things people don't actually need to survive, like electronics and gasoline. Mom shook her head in disbelief when I told her how much people would be willing to pay in the States for an organic papaya. "Here we think canned food is trash," mom says. I agree. We also talked a bit about the privatization of water and how one of the big reasons that Daniel Ortega was elected president in 2006 was precisely this issue and his promise to not privatize it.
Back to the food. After coffee Miriam takes us to get fresh, local fruit sorbet. I obviously can't refuse guanabana, Abby gets mango and Miriam gets a fruit called nispero, which she says is related to the zapote. Wow. And now that the day is starting to get hot, there's really nothing better.
We walk up and down the market while Miriam points here and there at fruits, vegetables and sweets. We try some rosquillas, which are sold everywhere and are basically crunchy baked rings of cheese dough. And then buñuelos, fried yucca and cheese covered with a honey-milk syrup. So slippery and doughy and delicious. I know fried things are unhealthy, but please let me worry about it when I'm older.
We buy a random assortment of vegetables, pretty much all the ones that Abby and I didn't recognize or weren´t used to eating..yucca, tiny ears of corn, extremely long stringy beans, chayote...and later Miriam magically transformed them all into an amazing soup, and although we were standing in the kitchen with her the whole time, we still aren't really sure how that happened.
And, well, besides the food, the best part of our visit to Jinotepe is the conversation with these wonderfully kind, concious, and lovely people. Even the most simple conversations, about a job for example, will be occasionally dotted with statements like, "Well, the outer world isn't even real so actually nothing can be trusted." Engels asks me again and again what our objectives for traveling are and I continue to think about it daily. He tells me "It's all about the journey inward. You can travel to a thousand places and meet a thousand people and do it all without changing yourself at all because you never travel inward to your self." This is a bit difficult when you're already into a trip without much of a plan or much information about where you are or where you're headed, but I am still thinking about it all the time, trying to come up with some clear objectives about why I came to Nicaragua. Now that I'm here and can really see the incredible depth and endlessly fascinating facets of this country, I realize I will have to come back, if only to have clear intentions about my visit.
The wind is fierce in Jinotepe. At night it carries us strange dreams and by morning leaves us covered in a thin layer of polvo, dust, lifted off the dry land that surrounds us. Better than mosquito bites, I guess. Usually the wind will begin as a quick gathering of air, churning itself up into a roar that makes the trees sounds like a sudden, heavy rainfall. And slowly it will wind itself quietly down until the air is still again, but only for a few minutes.
Ah I already miss the constant joking and teasing of our home in Jinotepe. Miriam tells us how she perceives Nicas as looking for one's weakness and then laughing about it and exploiting it until one can laugh at their own weakness. An interesting idea, not for the sensitive, but I kinda like it.
So the food. Our introduction into Nicaraguan food began with Miriam, Engels partner, a wonderful and brilliant Austrian gal. She started our day with pinolillo, a drink made of ground cornmeal, water, cacao and spices, and which Engles' family makes from scratch at home.
Miriam hands us a plate with soft wheat bread and chunks of cheese and papaya. After that we had some delicious dark coffee from Jinotega, that Engels mom said is the best in the country. Even as good as the coffee was the conversation we had while drinking it with mom, the housecleaner (who is so close with the family I thought she was mom's sister) and Miriam. We talked about how cheap and good food is in Nicaragua and how in the United States the only things that are cheap are things people don't actually need to survive, like electronics and gasoline. Mom shook her head in disbelief when I told her how much people would be willing to pay in the States for an organic papaya. "Here we think canned food is trash," mom says. I agree. We also talked a bit about the privatization of water and how one of the big reasons that Daniel Ortega was elected president in 2006 was precisely this issue and his promise to not privatize it.Back to the food. After coffee Miriam takes us to get fresh, local fruit sorbet. I obviously can't refuse guanabana, Abby gets mango and Miriam gets a fruit called nispero, which she says is related to the zapote. Wow. And now that the day is starting to get hot, there's really nothing better.
We walk up and down the market while Miriam points here and there at fruits, vegetables and sweets. We try some rosquillas, which are sold everywhere and are basically crunchy baked rings of cheese dough. And then buñuelos, fried yucca and cheese covered with a honey-milk syrup. So slippery and doughy and delicious. I know fried things are unhealthy, but please let me worry about it when I'm older.
We buy a random assortment of vegetables, pretty much all the ones that Abby and I didn't recognize or weren´t used to eating..yucca, tiny ears of corn, extremely long stringy beans, chayote...and later Miriam magically transformed them all into an amazing soup, and although we were standing in the kitchen with her the whole time, we still aren't really sure how that happened.
And, well, besides the food, the best part of our visit to Jinotepe is the conversation with these wonderfully kind, concious, and lovely people. Even the most simple conversations, about a job for example, will be occasionally dotted with statements like, "Well, the outer world isn't even real so actually nothing can be trusted." Engels asks me again and again what our objectives for traveling are and I continue to think about it daily. He tells me "It's all about the journey inward. You can travel to a thousand places and meet a thousand people and do it all without changing yourself at all because you never travel inward to your self." This is a bit difficult when you're already into a trip without much of a plan or much information about where you are or where you're headed, but I am still thinking about it all the time, trying to come up with some clear objectives about why I came to Nicaragua. Now that I'm here and can really see the incredible depth and endlessly fascinating facets of this country, I realize I will have to come back, if only to have clear intentions about my visit.
The wind is fierce in Jinotepe. At night it carries us strange dreams and by morning leaves us covered in a thin layer of polvo, dust, lifted off the dry land that surrounds us. Better than mosquito bites, I guess. Usually the wind will begin as a quick gathering of air, churning itself up into a roar that makes the trees sounds like a sudden, heavy rainfall. And slowly it will wind itself quietly down until the air is still again, but only for a few minutes.
Ah I already miss the constant joking and teasing of our home in Jinotepe. Miriam tells us how she perceives Nicas as looking for one's weakness and then laughing about it and exploiting it until one can laugh at their own weakness. An interesting idea, not for the sensitive, but I kinda like it.
