This post is about one of the things I like the most here, Honduran food. Since we got to La Esperanza, our daily menu is quite limited, but still pretty good.
At the house/office we have lived, we always have eggs, mango, avocado, pancakes, tortilla and beans, and this is the list of the ingredients of all our meals. We usually start our day with a cup of coffee, made with coffee produced by one of the CRS’s staff. For the first time in my life, I can directly say to the farmer how amazing is the coffee’s smell; way better than choosing a random coffee in supermarket’s shelves. At breakfast, we eat mango with pancake or eggs. Sometimes we can enjoy it with the lovely company of some cows having the lawn for breakfast.
For me, the best part is that we often have one meal out and I usually order the same, the typical Honduran dish called baleada. Before coming to Honduras, I searched for the Honduran gastronomy. Last year the World Cup took place in Brazil and many blogs wrote about the culture and cuisine of the different participating countries, including Honduras. In one blog there was an entry about the difference in the culinary of Honduras and Switzerland, as they were playing in the same group. Living in Switzerland and having Honduras as my next destiny, I was curious and began to read the article. The person who wrote the blog instead of using the original name “baleadas” translated the traditional Honduran dish to Portuguese as “tiros” which the translation to English is gunshots. I showed that to a friend of mine like “oh, I am going to a dangerous country where even food names allude to violence”.
Since the first time I tried baleadas, in my first breakfast in Honduras, I fell in love with it. I can have baleadas almost every day and always enjoy the taste of beans, with eggs, avocado and sour cream involved in flour tortilla. It became part of my list of favorite food.
Yesterday, a woman told me the legend of the name baleadas. According to it, an old lady in the Honduran North Coast used to sell flour tortilla to the rural workers. One day she was shot, but survived. From that moment on, the workers started to say “vamos a la baleada” (let’s go to the one who was shot). And that’s why the name of the dish became baleadas.
Honduran people eat baleadas, as well as other dishes like tacos and enchiladas, without cutlery. At first, I really suffered to eat with my hands. The good thing is that the Hondurans are so friendly and hospitable that in the restaurant we normally go to, realizing my inability to eat with my hands, they started to always serve my baleadas with cutlery. Hopefully, by the end of my experience here, I will be as skillful as the Hondurans when it comes to eating without cutlery, only using tortillas to grab food.
