Comida Chapina

For lack of ganas (urge, desire, aspiration) and a sense of obligation (it’s a personal goal of mine to post on a regular basis), I figured I’d fall back on a reliable topic: food. Here’s what I ate for breakfast today.


You’re looking at a plate of black beans, rice, tomato-puree sauce and flank beefsteak, which comes with a stack of freshly toasted tortillas, instant coffee and homemade picante (salsa). There are plenty of napkins and the tablecloth is cheery.

First off – I really like this food. Second – I eat it quite often.

I go to the same comedor (diner) for all my meals, usually breakfast, lunch and dinner but not always. Sometimes I’m just not hungry – Doña (Mrs.) Terry and her employees give me lots of food, and sometimes I’ll leave lunch feeling stuffed and won’t need to eat a solid meal until 8:00 the next morning.

Other times, random people will invite me to eat with them – fried chicken and macaroni salad at their dinner table, ramen noodles and tortillas in the back of their grocery store or a mug of instant coffee and pan dulce (sweetbread) right out in the street. Other times I’ll leave town for a couple of days, get some R&R with Peace Corps friends in the bigger cities and eat stuff like Indian food, bagels, real coffee and falafel.

When I’m in my site, however, it’s usually what you see above or a slight variation. It would be safe for me to say that every day, I eat two of the following three dishes:

Fried chicken/beans/rice/tortillas/instant coffee (or kool-aid)
Steak/beans/rice/tortillas/instant coffee (or kool-aid)
Fried eggs/beans/rice/tortillas/instant coffee (or kool-aid)

There are a few nuances within these options….

Fried chicken or steak, for example, could be for any meal. Eggs, however, are usually only found in the morning (or at night, if you show up at the comedor after 7:30 and the food has run out and they throw a plate together for you, usually with little hot dogs sliced in half lengthwise and fried)

You’re pretty much guaranteed to get an animal protein every meal. However, sometimes it’ll come with beans and no rice. Other times it’s rice and no beans. Personally I like getting both and I’ll ask for it sometimes– what’s cool is that there’s no charge for a spoonful of extra beans if you happen to be especially hungry)

Some other things to think about:

The fried chicken is breaded with a mixture of instant soup bouillon and salt. Whoa.

Don’t ask for coffee at lunch – that’s crazy (it’s too hot to drink coffee at 1:00)

You can always ask for more tortillas – just make the noise that sounds like you’re shooing a cat outside to get your Seño(ra)’s attention, and she’ll bring you a new stack hot off the woodstove top.

If you’re Guatemalan, roll your tortillas up and alternate bites of food with bites of tortilla. Eat the meat with your hands, at the end, mouthful by mouthful. Meanwhile, I get funny looks for requesting a knife, cutting my steak into pieces, mixing everything together and loading the tortillas up like a taco.

(I have this suspicion that they think I’m Mexican when I do this.)

You can also ask for water instead of kool-aid or coffee, but the word agua translates roughly to “drinks” and refers to soda, so say agua pura.

Caldo de Mano (translation: hand soup?) is a tripe and fatback soup that Doña Terry likes to prepare, seeing that most Guatemalans are big fans. Meanwhile, I don’t recommend this dish.

Feria!

The country fair came to town this week; here in Guatemala, the phenomenon of fried food, excessive drinking, carnival rides, loud music, beauty contests, parades, carnies, tacky souvenirs and sweets is known as Feria.




Feria is usually a week-long celebration and most towns have one at some point throughout the year, depending on the patron saint or celebrated figure. Here it’s Los Tres Reyes Magos, or the Three Wise Men. If you’re an average citizen or Muni employee, you get pretty much the entire week off work.


We got the Feria started yesterday with a big show in the Municipal Stadium, a triple bill with the Feria Queen competition (4 contestants with their bathing suits, fantasy costumes, speeches and so on), a famed impersonator (I don’t know, nor do I remember who he was impersonating) and a concert from Fabiola Rodas, a Mexican who won Latin America’s version of American Idol a couple years back. I worked a booth so I didn’t have to pay the 50Q ($7) entry fee. Scheduled to start at 7, getting going at 9:30 and finishing at 2 AM was pretty much par for the course, so I was pretty tired today.


I dragged myself out of the house this morning to watch a big parade, then walked back to the Municipal Stadium to catch the horse show and see a dance troupe with some bizarre Lord Of The Rings costumes. There was a women’s soccer game afterwards, but I was hungry and left to go get lunch.


Tonight I checked out the Midway, or games section of the carnival. It’s pretty much just like the United States – games of chance that probably involve you being separated from your money:


Toss a coin!

Get it inside a ring without touching and you win. (even the kid thinks this is boring)


Throw a dart!

Hit the right picture and win (less than what you paid for the darts)


Roll the marbles!

Each slot has a number and with the right combination you win (guy gave me a practice throw and when I added up the numbers wrong he told me I didn’t know how to count lol)

By the way - this is where pork tacos come from:


People are all into pork tacos around here, but I think things like “trichinosis” and keep my street-fried-pig intake to a minimum.

Woot woot! It’s Christmas!

Once again, tamales are the go-to delicacy here in Guatemala, although my host mom made some last night that took the flavor to a new level. Raisins, prunes, olives, peppers, free-range chicken (gallina criolla) and cornmeal, slathered in a molé type sauce and wrapped up in a palm frond – so tasty. Oh, and the guy enjoying a tamale next to me? That’s my host brother, and no, he’s not a vicious gangster. (really, he’s a great guy!)


Last night, we ate two tamales each for Christmas Eve dinner, then another before bed; local tradition includes hugs at midnight, wishings of feliz navidad and then a final stuffing of yourself with however many more tamales you can muster. Me, I can always oblige my hosts, foreign or domestic, on eating games that involve me showing how much I appreciate the local cuisine. Bring it (the food) on. Lol.

I shared some food too, a big gingerbread cake that I decided to bake and share with host family, friends, coworkers and neighbors as my own little North American tradition.


The whole experience, from mixing and baking the cake in a giant oven at the local panaderia, to walking through the streets of my town and sharing it with all my acquaintances, was pretty fun. I was glad to have something to share with people.

Back a few weeks ago, I went to Xela and bought some Betty Crocker pre-mixed magic in a box. Xela, By the way, is everyone’s slang for Quetzaltenango, which is the nearest big city with a Hiper Paiz, Walmart’s unfortunate (but convenient!) excursion into Guatemala – it’s the only place where you can find stuff like gingerbread, crunchy peanut butter, boxer shorts and normal pillows. Anyway, so once I had the ingredients I needed for my “cultural contribution”, my host mom suggested that I go see an old coworker of hers who quit working in the Muni budget office about 5 years ago (I wonder why) and took up baking instead.




Entering the tableau was fascinating ... I’ve always liked bread and baking, so it was awesome to witness Guatemalan baking firsthand. Of course, it was funny watching the family watch me, acting polite at first, definitely a bit wary about this seemingly amicable foreigner who waited patiently for room on the mixing table and space in the oven. But soon enough the kids got curious and then excited, after having tasted both the cake batter and icing, knowing that I was going to share.


Gotta let the cake cool, kids….(so cute).

So yeah! That was my little Christmas offering to my community, and I’m pretty happy with the way everything turned out. Everyone thought it was muy sabroso, and those who missed out demanded to know why (I ran out plain and simple; I must have cut that cake in over 50 pieces). I hope everyone else out there is having a good time!

P.S. My Muni FINALLY paid its employees yesterday, at the 11th hour. With checks coming out on Christmas Eve, there was barely enough time for people to cash their checks and buy tamale ingredients. Yet the score isn’t settled; my coworkers are still owed two MORE months of salary, given December and the aguinaldo (holiday bonus) of a month’s wages that is customary here.

People were getting pretty worked up earlier this week – apparently there were demonstrations with bullhorns and declarations of public hunger, but I was at a conference in a nearby town and missed it. I called my security advisor at the Peace Corps and asked him if I should be worried; he said this happens every year. “Mayors here in Guatemala”, he said, “often don’t have the education necessary to follow a budget, so they blow their finances in the first 10 months and everyone gets mad at the end of the year when there’s no money to pay employees. But it hardly ever gets violent.”

Uhh, Merry Christmas!