Bananas we chopped out of one of the many banana trees at the work site. Lovin' the fresh fruit!
By popular demand, I’m continuing the “Welcome to the Jungle” series with the topic everyone is curious to know about- food.
3. Food (comida)
a. Breakfast
We eat breakfast every morning around 7 am and it usually consists of eggs (scrambled or hard boiled), bread, rice pudding, or fried plantains. To drink we have tea or instant coffee…interesting side note about the coffee- Ecuador exports some of the best coffee in the world but everyone here seems to drink thick, chunky instant coffee. Not my favorite.
b. Lunch
Lunch is the biggest meal of the day and we eat it around 12:30 when we get back from moving rocks. The first course is always a soup…sopa de pollo, sopa de pez, sopa con queso, sopa, sopa, sopa! There’s always soup, usually with some kind of animal part sticking out. We’ve come up with a game to see who’s the “winner” of the soup game. Who ever gets the wing of the chicken has to pretend like they are flapping their wings and yell “Gano!” meaning “I win!” It’s great fun!
Hermana Angela and her daughter Estefani holding the fish we ate in our soup for lunch. YUM!
Segundos or seconds come out next. These usually consist of half a plate of rice, some kind of meat (sometimes we ask, sometimes we just eat), and a vegetable. Angela is a woman from the church that has done an amazing job keeping us fed. Recently, she’s made some delicious popcorn and fried bananas as a special treat for us. Our favorite part of lunch is always the different kinds of juices. Here you can chop any kind of fruit out of a tree, squeeze the juice out, add some water and sugar and you’re good to go. Favorites have been blackberry and guayabana juice. By this time, we’re pretty full!
c. Dinner
Dinner is eaten around 6 or 7 each evening and is usually another bowl of soup. Our favorites soups have been a chicken noodle (not anything like Campells) and a cheesy potato. Dad, you’d be proud- I’ve polished off a few bowls of fish soup during my time here! As I type this, we just chopped the head off a rooster that will be tonight’s dinner…YUM!
d. Snacks
My favorite snacks by far are the ones straight from the jungle! Cacao is what you make chocolate from but before it gets into a Hershey’s bar, you need to dry out the seeds. Around each seed is a sweet layer of delicious goober that has the consistency of snot (no joke). If the consistency doesn’t bother you, you’ve got your self the best candy around. My other new favorite is cana (with a tilde over the n) or sugar cane. I feel a bit like a panda bear as I gnaw on this woody stick filled with sweet sugary water. Once you’ve sucked all the juice out, you spit out the stick. I’m going to miss these treats when we leave the jungle!
Cacao- where chocolate comes from. Cut it open with your machete or smash it on a rock to suck on some sweet goobery morsels, which are really the seeds. The seeds are laid out to dry and then smashed to make a chocolate powder. Think of that next time you're eating a Hershey's bar… or 86% cacao dark chocolate bar.
I’m doing well, getting over a bit of a cold, but loving my time in Ecuador!
