La Comida

26 June 2016

I feel bad that I can’t really contribute much to the menu around here. Part of my pre-arrival instructions were to “bring recipes to share & make food”, which I did. But I was not prepared for the lack of supplies & ingredients available to work with. Here is our entire stock of food:

Non-perishables: rice, different kinds of dried beans, canned corn, canned tuna, canned sardines (they seem to be really put off by the idea of eating canned vegetables, not sure why), “carba” which is some sort of crumbled soy protein but not at all like tofu – more like ground chicken, dehydrated soup packets, saltines, “crusty bread” which is like a giant crouton, flour, masa, pasta, tea packets, iced tea mix, hot chocolate mix, coffee, powdered milk, condensed milk, butter, jam, mayonnaise, catchup, salt, pepper, sugar, popcorn kernels, & a shit load of candy.

Perishables: LOTS of eggs, white bread, bananas, oranges, limes, plantains, onions, green beans, beets, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, & cabbage.

I offer you the above lists and ask you: what the hell would you do with all that? So far we haven’t cracked open the sardines…though we did have pasta with tuna one day (tasted like a tuna casserole minus the bread crumbs & seasonings). There is only a large camping stove to work with & I have been introduced to a pressure cooker for the first time. There is a refrigerator, but with no electricity, it’s just being used as a pantry for bread. Why they have it, I’m not sure; maybe they had plans to add electricity that never materialized?

Lunch of pasta con carba & rice

Meals are small except for lunch, which we make the night before & pack with us to eat at the camp during the day. It’s funny that talk during meals almost always centers around what “real” foods they miss from home – which is to be expected at field sites, I find. It sounds like whatever budget they have for this project is pretty slim on the food line items. No one’s starving of course; meals are just small, fairly plain and quite often repetitive – you can’t really expect much more at such a limited field site. Breakfast is always a small serving of scrambled eggs with onion & tomatoes, plus toast. Lunch is usually rice & beans or pasta (the latter being a better choice for cold lunch), though on occasion we’ve made been a cabbage salad or fried plantains as a side dish. (I bring along a banana or an orange for a snack & there’s always candy in someone’s pocket). Dinner is either a bowl of soup or rice with beans or eggs. Essentially, you work with what you’ve got. However, I don’t understand how any self-respecting remote location doesn’t have any peanut butter! How is that not an inexpensive, minimalist, essential staple?! (It’s clearly just an American thing ;)

Sometimes we give agua de panela to the hummingbirds to help revive them

The one thing I’ve been introduced to here is what I have been told is more or less the national drink called agua de panela. It’s essentially a super concentrated chunk of processed sugar cane that is boiled in water to make a hot drink. It’s pure sugar water; we are de facto human hummingbirds. The first couple days I thought it was really good: like a nice warm cup of hot water mixed with honey & some lime squeezed in – it was really comforting to imbibe after 12 hours of sitting in the damp cold. But too much of it & it’s just a super sweet liquid that leaves your mouth all sugary. Though, I’ve found mixing it with powdered milk helps cut the sweetness a bit if you can get past the pasty chunks of dairy ;P I can see why they talk about food so much. Mario has promised the team that if we catch 400 birds this season, he will treat everyone to nachos! (So far we’re at just under 300.) While an enticing prospect, those nachos won’t be happening until the team returns to Cali in mid/late August, so sadly I’ll miss out on the wager ;)