Greetings from Honduras!

Hola! I’ve been in Honduras this week for work, and will be coming home tomorrow. I can’t wait to share all of my experiences with you. For now, I wanted to share what eating locally means in Honduras.

Most meals consist of fried chicken, fried plantain, rice, red beans, and handmade corn tortillas. Lots of starch! Sometimes they include a piece of mild cheese as shown on the right. This is the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner, although in the city people are more likely to have coffee and a piece of sweet bread rather than a full breakfast.

We stayed at the home of Lazaro and his wife one evening, after he had shown our group his plantain trees and coffee plants. They offered sweetened coffee, and I learned that the beans were from his finca up in the mountains, and they roast and grind them as needed. It was very flavorful, definitely as good as any expensive coffee shop coffee I’ve had.

Part of the reason I’m here is to survey communities where we send work teams to build pilas, floors, and latrines. I asked them what they thought about North Americans. They said that they were trained how to cook for them. I wondered what that meant. They said that North Americans are on diets and prefer their food cooked in oil not lard. They also like pancakes, french fries, hamburgers, and lots of chicken.

I found the lard comment very interesting – and was reminded of all my real food friends. I wondered if the influence of North Americans had changed their typical meal patterns, and if they would start thinking that oil is better than lard. What other foods have we exported? I saw McDonald’s and Wendy’s. Apparently Taco Bell did not do well here (not surprising, you can get much better food for cheaper on the side of the road if you want  tortillas!)

Ah, the globalization of food. ¡qué interesante

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