Food

I wrote before about how we receive our lunch and dinner cooked for us by Marie who cooks for the students in the guesthouse. As of a week ago, we decided not to receive that service anymore. I felt the food was good and Aaron did also…most of the time! We didn’t feel it was enough food and it mostly consisted of vegetables which we didn’t feel warranted what we were being charged. Aaron doesn’t care for many vegetables, he likes some but there were a couple of nights he couldn’t even eat. For example, one repeated dinner was cauliflower fried in eggs with a red sauce and rice. It was good! But Aaron doesn’t care for cauliflower. I liked it but cauliflower does a terrible number on my Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Actually that’s the other reason, we both had been so bloated from the food!!!! For me, I think it was all the veggies, some just don’t agree with me (two of them I had never even heard of before!!! LOL), and all the corn tortillas (which I would eat several b/c the portions never quite filled us up) and corn is another big aggravator of my IBS. So we decided to start cooking for ourselves again! ☺
Cooking the food: I just have to share my cooking conditions b/c it’s comical and quite a puzzle to coordinate! Here is a picture of what I have to cook with. There is no stove, but there is a microwave, toaster, and an electric “hot plate” I guess you could call it?! (Another reason it feels like we’re camping!!!! LOL) It’s like one burner from a stovetop. Which is great, 

however, I usually use 2 or 3 while cooking. So I’ve been trying to think of some “one pot” meals since I only have 1 burner! LOL So far we’ve had fried chicken with noodles (in the microwave) and cucumber (no need to cook), chicken and onions with rice (in the microwave) and broccoli (in the microwave). That one was tricky b/c the rice took forever (the microwave isn’t that powerful, maybe b/c of the altitude) and 2 things had to be cooked in the micro. Last night we had ground beef fried up with salsa and some other seasonings and crumpled u

p tostada chips mixed in and cut up guacamole. This weekend I am hop

ing to get some pork chops. You can only get what the small little supermarket has and so you have to get what’s in!

Shopping for the food: Here is a picture of what I take on my 10-block walk to La Bodegona (the grocery store here). The stroller is b/c the bags are very heavy after a 10-block walk (I       used to do it repeatedly untilI got the bright id

ea of taking the stroller to ease the strain) and the bags are so that I don’t have to pay for bags and they are just sturdier to make the trek home. Our first month, we lived about 15 blocks away and we had to buy water too. So I have to l

ug 4-gallon size waters home too! I would take a Tuk-Tuk (little 2-seater "taxi") on those days (which I’ve attached a pic of also, they only cost $2 to take home) until I had the idea about the stroller. Now, though, our water is delivered! How nice! We shop twice a week b/c we can only buy at one time

enough to put is those 2 bags. I go on Wed morning and we all go on Sat morning. McDonald’s is 2 doors down from La Bodegona so the kids can play for a little bit! I can’t tell you how much I miss Wal-Mart!!!!!!! Driving my car there, having a nice big shopping cart, walking down nice big aisles (I can barley fit the stroller down an aisle at La Bodegona!), having many choices of everything, the cashier packing my bags for me and driving back home.