Food, Glorious Food

General rule: anything that can be fried will be fried. I am certainly not complaining, fried food is ever so tasty. My fried food experiences: ham, onions, platanos (fried platanos are called tostones and are WONDERFUL with ketchup, which is spelled in innumerable ways here), salami, empanadas, potatoes, chicken, beef, and eggs. I had had fried eggs at home in the States. No, no, no, no. Those were not fried eggs, they were pan-fried eggs. To truly fry an egg, you must crack it into hot oil!

My favorite food thus far is mangu (sp?) with fried/vinegar-doused red onions. Mangu looks like mashed potatoes but is made from platanos duros, which are basically green bananas that have been boiled. Mangu with the vinegar onions is absolutely fantastic; this is another Dominicanism that I will certainly adopt.

The juices here cannot be beat. The best is when my house mom makes fresh mango juice in the evening and puts it in the freezer. Then, in the morning, some has turned icy and the juice has turned into the best slurpy that every graced the face of the earth.

We typically have rice with every non-breakfast meal. While people warned that I would become tired of rice, I don’t really think I will…I happen to really like rice. However, I do develop a minor case of the hiccups (called hipos here!) each time I have rice, so I average hiccups two to three times each day. (For those of you who are worried about my odd condition, worry not I fully intend/will get checked out upon my return). Quite frequently, the rice is served with habichuelas, a bean mix that you pour on top of the rice, which is good too. The crispy rice on the bottom and sides on the pot is frequently served as different dish “arroz con con.” While I love chipping away and snacking on con con on my own, I find that I don’t particularly like a whole plateful of con con…too much dryness. It’s similar to my Lucky Charm experience. Freshman year I made a side comment about how the best part of Lucky Charms is the marshmallows and I couldn’t figure out why the other part even existed. One of my dear, dear friends heard this cry and ever so thoughtfully gave me a Tupperware full of just Lucky Charm marshmallows for my 19th birthday (one of the best/most creative gifts I’ve received in the past few years). Well, like con con, it was simply the wrong context. I just didn’t enjoy a container full of solely marshmallows as much as I did just picking them out of the mix.

While there is some meat served with each meal, the meat, which is quite flavorful and tender, is typically more of a side rather than a main dish. Similarly, vegetables are few and far between. Normally, I avoid tomatoes at all costs. Here, I readily embrace them. Interestingly enough, they are often served green; their flavor and scent is not as strong, which works in my favor for sure. My previous experience with fruit and vegetables is singular in nature. That is, you only eat red tomatoes. You only eat yellow bananas. Here, green tomatoes and platanos are used to make different variants of the same dishes, or new dishes entirely.

Coffee. First of all, it is NEVER served cold, which is interesting because people are constantly commenting “hace mucho calor.” Secondly, people drink it all day every day. Thirdly, it is served in small portions…none of this tall, grande, vente madness. Coffee comes in one size “chin.” Thirdly, there is no such thing as too much sugar and coffee is always best when supersaturated with sucrose. For reference, last week, I was handed a Dixie cup of coffee. After I finished it, I looked at the bottom of the cup and saw a good centimeter of sugar coating the base…think about the proportions! I told my host family “no es café con sucre, es sucre con café. ”(For further reference for those of you who are familiar with Autumn’s unhealthy relationship with coffee and sweetener: she would not have to add a single grain). Finally, there is Calvin and Hobbes comic in which Calvin is depicted as a hummingbird and in the last panel we see that he’s drinking a soda. I think of that exact cartoon every time I have my chin de café.

I love coconut dishes, particularly desserts. One of my favorites is German chocolate cake, primarily because I like the coconut based frosting, and by primarily I mean solely because I always eat around the actual cake. Last week, my host mother made, from scratch (her husband literally opened the coconuts with a machete in the morning…a machete is a standard kitchen tool here), the equivalent of this frosting as a dessert. Can you say true love?

Typically, breakfast is a small meal and lunch and dinner are larger, though dinner is served later in the evening (we often eat around 9ish). It’s hot during the day so se fueron our appetites. In general, there is very little to no snacking.

Tangentially related, I just signed up for the Rock ‘n Roll half marathon in San Jose in October http://www.rnrsj.com/home.html and I encourage anyone who’s in the area to sign up too. There are bands every half-mile and it sounds like it will be a complete blast/it will get me running as soon as I get home August 29th. Very few things motivate me more than money I’ve spent!

Mi comida es tu comida,
Anne