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| Ayote on the Vine |
The culinary low-point of the trip was the journey in both
directions. We left home at 3:00 AM and flew American Airlines early on
Saturday morning out of Charlotte and through Miami with a very tight
connection in Miami so that I arrived in Managua airport very hungry. Not very
intelligently I had packed my snacks in my checked luggage (and I was not
reunited with my luggage until my third day in Nica). Luckily the bus meeting
us was stocked with snacks--plantain chips, bananas, peanuts, and mini-pastries
and the crew went straight to a restaurant in Matagalpa once everyone had
arrived. Similarly, this evening I am on the flight from Miami back to
Charlotte and the food in the E terminal of Miami airport was absolutely dire
for a person on a tight time frame wanting to eat something whole-foods and
plant-based. I finally settled on an already packed salad from a Pizza Hut
vendor. Every single item available this evening at this Pizza Hut had cheese
on it or in it (the sandwiches, snacks, pasta, and pizza)—including my salad
and both salad dressing choices. I opted out of the dressing, worked around the
cheese and helped my self to hot peppers, pepper and salt from the self-serve
containers. I tossed in some of these condiments, a snack bag of fruit and nuts
and managed to keep low blood sugar at bay for another hour or two.
This airport experience highlighted for me how well I had
eaten over the last week. Due to masterful planning of our fearless leaders, a
full hot breakfast was included at the two hotels we stayed at, and lunches
were provided by a local comedor at
the work sites. A typical day’s meals went something like this…a typical
Nicaraguan breakfast of gallo pinto (rice and red beans) and pan-fried
plantains with hot sauce. Others in the crew had a giant fruit plate, or
pancakes, or cereal, fruit, and yogurt or ham, eggs, and toast. Lunch came
packed in a Styrofoam box and was remarkably tasty and varied. Four of the
sixteen crew members are vegetarian and each day the lunch preparers sent one
vegetarian meal “sin lacteo” for me. Most days there was some sort of textured
vegetable protein main dish or beans, steamed carrots, potato and ayote (a
large squash like fruit/vegetable), rice, and salad. On the 5th day,
one of the compartments contained potatoes mashed with peppers onions and
carrots that were delicious!
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| Vegetariano sin lacteo lunch box |
And then dinner was out at a restaurant or at our hotel. Often
no vegetarian meal was listed on the menu so we tried the strategy of asking
for a vegetarian plate with varying success. The best of these had rice, beans,
tostones, cooked vegetables and/or salad, and papas fritas spiced up with chile
sauce. The worst was an iceberg lettuce salad topped with American cheese,
Nicaraguan cheese and a few cut up vegetables and ranch dressing. This night I
ordered papas fritas to fill my
tummy. Not a culinary highlight.
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| Another plant based lunch box |
A particularly humorous food ordering mishap happened at the
Rancho associated with our hotel one evening when I was dining with 3
companions who set out to find pizza. Two of us chose a vegetarian pizza to
share—with the help of a native Spanish speaker—I requested half of the pizza
to be made without cheese. When it arrived, one half was beautifully and amply
topped with vegetables and cheese and the other side had a dried up thin
coating of sauce and nothing else. I wish I had taken my camera to dinner that
eve. We did manage to successfully send it back for some toppings on the naked
side.
Traveling in Nicaragua was delicious and easy with advance
planning on the part of the organizers.
If we had stayed at a place with cooking facilities, the food would have
been marvelous. The produce was fresh, plentiful and delicious. Think
avocados, tropical fruit, potatoes, plantains, tomatoes, onions, and squash.
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| Produce Stand in San Ramon, Nicaragua |
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