Nica Cuisine!!

Now that my stomach has adjusted a bit, my host family has been giving me different foods to try. Everything here is realllyyyyyyy good, although certain flavors have taken a little getting used to. My host mom doesn't even like to cook, but she is really good at it.

A short list of foods I've tried so far:

Gallo pinto is a daily staple, made from red beans and rice mixed together, fried in a bit of oil. Hence the name: it looks like a black and white chicken.  Just as Peru and Chile fight over who discovered the potato first, Nicaragua and Costa Rica disagree over who invented the dish and who makes it better.

Tostones/Platano frito/ Platano Maduro/Guineo Cuadrado- There are tons of different kinds of plantains and at least as many ways to prepare it: boiled, ripe & fried a bit, sliced (platano cuadrado, which tastes sort of like potatoes), sliced in curly strips or puffed up in little balls (tostones).

Queso/Cuajada is delicious (although unpasteurized) cheese, made from cow's milk,  with a salty and slightly fermented taste.  Cuajada is made from the same milk, but is strained a little bit more.

Guacamol- The avocados here are gigantic. The Nicaraguan version of guacamole is made with  hard boiled eggs and chopped up avocado pieces.

La fruta de pan or breadfruit, is the coolest looking fruit ever!!!!!! (Except for petaya, which has a special place in my heart). Also, it tastes like potato chips.

Guyaba are fruits have a green skin, with pink flesh and are sometimes eaten with salt.  On Friday, my host sister-in-law, host granddaughter and I went to the town nursery and picked guyaba from a tree.

Nanciste are small little fruits that taste sort of like crabapples.

Nacatamales are one of Nicaragua's signature dishes,  typically eaten on Sundays for breakfast because they are so heavy on the digestive system. Similar to tamales from other countries, but much better, they are made by steaming corn meal, meat, potato, onion, yerba buena, and tomato in banana leaves. A giant serving of yummy.

Elote is the Central American word for ears of corn.  There's a woman who comes by our house on weekends with a horse and cart and sells them. They are sweet, and slightly roasted and super good.

Atol is a  thick drink made from some sort of corn based product, milk and cinnamon. It's sort of heavy and very sweet, but also very good. 

Calula is passionfruit. They make it here in refrescos, or fruit drinks. It is sweet and sour at the same time.