So Much Food!

This post began as part of the main post, but it quickly grew vastly out of proportion. Since food here is definitely not allocated in similar ways as what we were used to in the US, we spend a disproportionate amount of time discussing the food we are given by our host families.  And since I’m a little obsessed with food…well, here comes all you’d ever want to know (and more!) regarding my general food situation in Barranquilla!

In general, meals here are made up of a variety of different sorts of starches with various preparations. While it’s safe to say that the main component of most of our meals are starch, the kind of starch and what’s been done with it seems to vary quite a bit. For instance, some of the families give their peace corps volunteers given mountains of rice (plain or prepared in different ways) as a side dish. Others of us get bread, or plantains in different ways. I seem to be getting more bollos than others as well as boiled potatoes, but more on that later.

In addition there being different kinds of food here, the other big meal variation is that lunch is the large meal of the day. The portion sizes of the lunches I’ve been served rival most American dinners; dinner here is much more like a traditional American lunch both in the time it takes to prepare and portion sizes.

It’s been years since I was served a plate of food that I was expected to finish, so this transition has been a bit rocky. The Peace Corps told the host families that we are used to eating big dinners, but apparently neglected to inform them that the lunches they serve us at school are ginormous so at first I was receiving large portions for dinner as well as lunch. I’ve since trained my family that I certainly can’t eat a giant sandwich, a quarter of a watermelon (literally), boiled potatoes AND saltines for dinner, as well as a huge cup of a juice and/or smoothie…but even now that I’m getting slightly more normal-sized portions, my host mom is convinced I’m going to waste away. (Now I get my meal served on a child-sized plate, it’s pretty hilarious)

Also, as some of you may or may not be aware, I spent the majority of this past year as an extremely happy vegetarian/light pescatarian. Okay, okay, I ate a little bacon occasionally…but that’s beside the point. The main point is that I thought it would be super easy to switch to eating meat here. I’m still trying, but this assumption was certainly incorrect! Could be that the first real helping of meat I ate was  a pungent slice of ham on a roll with cheese and butter, and then the next night, some sort of meat that can only be classified as “ground.” My stomach was still making resentful noises when I awoke the next morning after each of these meals. I also haven’t had full helpings of milk since my parents stopped forcing it on me sometime after elementary school. Here, however, morning liquid in my house is served in the form of a cupful of warm milk with some sort of flavoring—aka café con leche, but really more accurately “leche con café”.  In the mornings, sugar and Nescafe (instant coffee) is generally placed beside my brimming cup of warm milk. So I’m drinking something resembling a warm mocha. Needless to say, my stomach had long since stopped producing enough lactaid for that sort of consumption level…

That being said, everything else is tasty enough, although the tasty balance of salt portioning doesn’t seem to exist (most things are either extremely salty or entirely bland). During the week, Peace Corps is having a restaurant cater lunch for us at the school. We get huge helpings of rice, veggies, meat, soup, and a little dessert as well. A traditional lunch is usually rice and chicken, the chicken diced up and served in the rice with lots of salt and oil, or roasted meat of some kind with meat and plantains, or other sorts of fried things. And juice. Lots and lots of juice of all sorts of different fruits with tons of added sugar. We convinced the restaurant to do veggie meals as well, so I usually get to eat lentils or beans or sautéed veggies for my main dish along with the requisite rice, fried plantains and iceberg lettuce.

For breakfast I’ve had everything from hardboiled eggs (the first hardboiled eggs I’ve ever had!) to a ham and cheese sandwich to boiled potatoes to bollos to fruit to cornflakes to saltines and/or bread…never only one thing, and usually three or four different components. Other breakfast options I’ve heard of include granola, raisin bran, sandwiches of all kinds, and/or Aveno, which is apparently some super sweet sort of grits/oatmeal concoction.

I’ve heard of some truly amazing dinners that other people receive, like sautéed veggies over mashed plantains and cheese, or vegetable salads and roast meat. My host family, however, prefers a simple approach. In addition to the ham, butter and cheese sandwiches they’re particularly fond of, I’ve had some Colombian version of spaghetti and meat, and lots of bollas. Bollas are corn based. They’re made of cornmeal or corn flour, not sure which, mixed with water into something like a paste, or really a gelatinous mass. It’s shaped into a tube, wrapped in corn husks, tied with a string and cooked in the oven. The most common form is plain white, and when on the plate looks sort of like a small log of boiled potato, except more gelatinous. They have no real taste…almost like a mix between rice or potato. They can also be made with cheese, with coconut milk slightly sweeter, or with a yellow, slightly sweeter corn. My host mom doesn’t make these, she buys them from the little store on the corner but they’re super common everywhere and used as a side dish for just about anything at breakfast or dinner.

Some other noteworthy foods include Queso Costeño—a strong, tangy cheese made locally here on the coast that’s stiffer than feta but comes in blocks reminiscent of it (my host mother loves it, so we have it at almost every meal), mangos for the fact that the streets are lined with mango trees and in the spring you can apparently just walk around and pick them up off the street and eat them, and plantain fritters, which have a name I don’t know right now, which are the side dishes to most meals and are fried to the point of having no taste or unique texture. 

Foods which I haven’t had yet but am looking forward to include empanadas—the delicious version of hot pockets, made mostly with a ground meat or chicken mixture (meat other than chicken here isn’t named, it’s simply called “carne”), and arrepas, which are dense, fried corn patties between which you put cheese or fried eggs or meat or butter (or any and all of the above). I’ll keep you posted!

Everything is super healthy here, as you can see, and with the heat and the general culture which includes walking no faster than an amble at best, and sitting everywhere you end up for prolonged periods of time…well, we’ll see how long it takes until I grow out of my clothes. Let’s just say it’s a good thing that there are no drying machines here. (We have a washing machine though, as a side note!) Maybe I’ll sneak some pictures of these at some point as well…but for now, that’s all I got.