Food is never far from the forefront of our groups’ mind. Our wonderful preoccupation with our meals didn’t skip a beat during student directed travel. We started our week off in the sleepy fishing village of Las Peñitas, a lazy beach town perfect for relaxing, swimming, and eating. So we relaxed, swam, and ate. If you had walked into the common area at Hostal Barca de Oro you would’ve found two people shooting billiards, two people contemplating their next seven chess moves, a few huddled around the cribbage board, a handful in hammocks, sleeping, talking, or strumming very, very basic guitar chords, and at least one plate of french fries, one tropical smoothie, and one typical Nicaraguan breakfast consisting of gallo pinto, eggs, fried Nica cheese, a tortilla, and a cup of bodacious black organic coffee. If you’d sauntered by at lunch, our plates would have either been filled with our American food fix, or the typical beach lunch of rice, a cabbage salad, a tortilla, and an entire fried fish. Our feasting brought us to the vibrant, lively, colorful, and historic city of Leon. The old capital of Nicaragua was always bustling with activity and was the perfect place for us to relax (when lounging in our hostel), explore some of the many historic landmarks this city has to offer, and eat more. In honor of eating more, the rest of this blog post will be dedicated to the cuisine of the streets of Leon, and a little game for you all to play, our esteemed followers. The way this game works is you will see a wide assortment of the food our group has consumed here, and you will also be provided with a list of the dishes’ names. Each picture will have a description and rating of the pictured food, however, the dishes will not be named.
Here are the names of the dishes pictured, not in any particular order (please do not consult any outside sources to cheat):
gallo pinto, quesillo, tejadas, pelibuey, bonuelos, panqueques, raspados, cholupa, cafe, guirila
In the first two photos you can see Lucas and Sammy P devouring mounds of delicious, doughy, fluffy breakfast platters often consumed with a syrupy dressing known as syrup. These tasty pastry creations receive a 10 because Lucas said they should and they looked pretty yummy from afar. However, this also receives $$ because it’s expensive.
The following 5 photos are all of comida corriente, a typical Nica plate that is very cheap, very fast, and can have basically whatever you want. The plates pictured here feature a wondrous mix of every food group. One famous dish is a ‘mazing mixture of last night’s rice and beans refried with amazing spices. Some have a touch of a cabbage salad, many golden glazed fried goodness in starchy fruit form, others still a certain type of meat that goes baaa, occasionally an unborn chicken (an egg) will find itself on your plate. One half $ for this type of food, almost too cheap to trust that it won’t make us poop ourselves.
The next two photos feature Emma and myself shoving fried yucca balls covered in honey-molasses sauce down our throats and loving every fantastic second. These are cheap. We hunted the sellers of this dessert. It was so good.
The following three photos feature the most widely consumed drug in the world. It’s a black liquid. It is wonderful. I am addicted. It gave many of us the much needed energy we lost from car horns sounding at all hours of the night and ruining our sleep. Free if you stay in the right places!
This next photo is of me eating a tortilla of fresh, young, white corn, mashed and lovingly placed on a grill to cook to perfection. It’s a little thick and chewy, but cheap and tasty.
Next we see Jenny enjoying her tortilla lined with cheese rolled around a heaping spoonful of onion topping and drenched in cream, maybe with some hot sauce. Yumminess. Cheapiness. Also, the quality depends on where you buy it. The people who sell them are usually the women perusing the Central Park with baskets on their head yelling quesillo, some make it better than others.
The next two pictures are of the national dish of Nicaraguan. So good. Hint, the name is in one of the pictures.
Following two: shaved ice topped with thick syrup, normally the flavors are carmel, pineapple, or tamarind (a tropical fruit). Always, it is good.
Fried thinly sliced starchy fruit covered in a cabbage salad follows.
An american classic that is sold on every block in Leon. Only a slight exaggeration.
Finally, a photo of Jess and a very memorable quote to accompany it: “The whole world just wants to poop.”
Also we had cake.
