So You Want to Join Peace Corps...

This video is hilariously accurate.  I love it.

So You Want to Join Peace Corps...

My Culinary Adventures: My Favorite Fried Rice

Honduras has several restaurants and street food vendors that specialize in fried rice.  They've got fried rice with chicken, beef, pork, shrimp, or plain and always give generous portions of food that could feed as many as 5 people out of one styrofoam box.  It tastes pretty good and it's decently priced (about $5 a box) but I grew up in an Asian household where my grandmother and other relatives on my mom's side (my dad is White) would cook fried rice often and have come to prefer their style over any other.  That is of course, not including the fried rice I made while here.  That is in a class of its own ;).  Kidding!  It was good but my family's is just downright simple, fast, and my preference.  Imagine how insanely happy I was to receive Chinese sausage and Sriracha hot sauce in the mail from them!  That same day I got down to it and made the rice I had been craving for 7 months.  Yum!

Recipe

Ingredients

Vegetable Oil

Onions, diced

Chinese sausage, sliced

Eggs

Peas

Few days old rice

Soy Sauce

Salt

Green onions, cut

Sriracha hot sauce

1. In a heated frying pan, add a little bit of oil, and cook the onions until translucent.
2. Add the sliced Chinese sausage and cook on medium-low heat until color turns darker.  No need to add more oil as the fat/oil from the sausage will seep out into the pan.
3. Whisk eggs in a bowl then add to pan and scramble
4. Dump in the rice and cook on medium-high heat, stirring constantly
5. Pour soy sauce for coloring
6. Add salt to taste
7. Sprinkle the green onions on last
8. Once everything is cooked and the fried rice is served, pour on the Sriracha!  

That is magical sauce :)  It's great on everything, from pizza, to meatballs, pasta, etc....

My Culinary Adventures: Cinnamon Swirl Banana Bread

I kept putting off making banana bread for some reason or other.  As much as I love to bake, I feel like using the toaster oven is so much of a hassle and heats up the kitchen and makes me all sweaty.  I don't need to be any more sweaty than I already am some days.  El Negrito gets so hot!  

I'm not sure what it was that prompted me to finally make the bread, but I'm glad it did.  I baked it the day before Reconnect (in-service training) and was surprised at how easy it was to make a delicious, moist banana bread!  The only problem I had was with the top of the bread deflating after taking it out of the oven :(.  I saved some to give to my coworker who I was taking to Reconnect to eat on the long trip south, and the rest for my friends once we all saw each other again.  I have to admit, this bread was pretty bomb!!  Next time I think I will try to alter the cinnamon swirl so that it's not just a straight line across and looks like an actual swirl =/.

Recipe

Copied from Lovin' From the Oven

For the bread:

3 over-ripe bananas, smashed up

1/3 cup melted butter

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

Dash of salt

1 1/2 cups flour

For the swirl:

1/3 cup sugar

1 Tbs cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350. Butter and four a loaf pan.  Recipe based on 9x5 pan.  If using a different size, keep an eye on the bread when baking.
2. Mix bananas, butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla together. sprinkle baking soda and salt around on top of the banana mixture. Then gently stir in flour. Be careful not to over-mix!
3. In a small dish, mix together the 1/3 cup sugar and 1 Tbs cinnamon.
4. Add 1/2 of the batter to the loaf pan and then sprinkle half, or a little more than half of the cinnamon-sugar mixture all over the batter in the pan. Add the rest of the batter, and then sprinkle the leftover cinnamon-sugar on top.
5. Bake for 50-60 minutes, but remember, if you’re using a different-sized loaf pan, be careful and keep checking on it!

My Culinary Adventures: Ground Beef with Veggies

It is difficult to think of a name for the dishes I make that are a combination of random ingredients.  This lack of creativity is not cool man, not cool.  At least it's clear what the dish is :).

I almost never buy meat here because it's expensive in terms of Lempiras.  Ground beef costs about $2 (38 Lempiras) for a pound, which doesn't seem like much at all but I would much rather buy bananas (about 2 Lempiras each), broccoli (12 Lemps), or other fruits and vegetables and eat those instead.  Save my money for other things!  

One night my site-mate invited our host family (we have the same one) and me to his house for dinner.  We were having hamburgers.  When the burgers came out, the meat tasted odd and it was kind of purple and I asked what kind of meat it was, and both he and my host dad said it was horse, to which my eyes widened in disbelief and I wasn't sure whether to spit out my food or even take them seriously.  Eventually they did tell me it was beef and I was relieved.  I don't know how I would feel or what I would do if it really was horse.  The meat flavoring was different from regular ground beef because it comes prepackaged with spices in it already.  Anyway, that was an interesting night and I learned not to be so gullible, but people still get me all the time.  *Sigh*

I bought the ground beef one day since I was cooking pasta and wanted meat sauce.  Turns out I had some leftover meat so I made this impromptu dish with a pataste that my coworker gave me.  Pataste is almost like potato but more watery.  That evening as I was cooking, I had some surprise guests.  The two nieces of my host mom stopped by to give something to me and I invited them to sit and eat with me.  I wasn't sure how the dish would taste since it was my first time making it but they really seemed to enjoy it and asked for seconds!

Recipe

Original Recipe

Ingredients

Pataste

Green Beans

Ground Beef

Tomato

Peas

Milk

Water

Flour

A billion spices, much more than needed I think: Black pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic and onion salts, sage, chives, dried basil, ground bayleaf, curry powder, turmeric, and maybe other stuff I don't remember.  I kind of put the whole kitchen sink of spices in there.

1. Steam pataste and green beans until tender.
2. In deep dish frying pan, cook ground beef until done.  Add tomatoes and peas and simmer on low heat until soft.
3. Strain steamed vegetables and transfer to frying pan.
4. Stir in milk, water, flour to thicken the sauce to your liking, and spices.
5. Simmer on low heat until sauce is thickened and spices are absorbed.

My Culinary Adventures: Peanut Butter Vegetable Chow Mein

Last year in July during training we all had volunteer visits, in which we traveled by ourselves to stay with currently serving PCVs at their sites for a few days.  I traveled south to the department of Choluteca with a couple other trainees.  The blog post about that trip is here.  Our host PCVs made a very interesting dinner for us, and I was surprised at how good it tasted, given the ingredients!  I finally got the recipe from them a few months ago and recreated the meal with a few changes on my own.  Mmmmm!  

Recipe

Ingredients

Broccoli, broken into florets and stem pieces

Green beans, cut

Carrots, cubed

Olive Oil

Onions, sliced

Garlic, minced

Orange Juice

Lemon Juice

Peanut Butter

Chow Mein Noodles

You can really put whatever vegetables you want in this.  I've used cabbage, peas, onions and carrots before.  

1. Boil about an inch of water in a saucepan and add all veggies except onions.  Steam until tender.
2. In heated frying pan, add olive oil, onions and garlic and sauté until soft.
3. Add steamed veggies, orange and lemon juice, and peanut butter and stir.
4. Cook noodles until tender and add to vegetable pan, stirring until well mixed.

My Culinary Adventures: Rice Pudding

So.  Turns out I had way too much sweet coconut rice leftover from the previous recipe and I was starting to get sick of it >_<.  What to do, what to do... Oh, I know!  How about rice pudding!  I pretty much threw this together and my oh my, how yummy it turned out!

I heated the leftover sweet coconut rice over the stove on medium-low heat and added vanilla, a lot of milk, cornstarch (which didn't work too well), flour (to do the cornstarch's job of thickening the mix), cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.  The rice pudding tastes great hot or cold, with a subtle variation of flavor depending on the temperature.

My Culinary Adventures: Sweet Thai Sticky Rice with Mango*

*Disclaimer: I have not been able to find actual sticky rice in Honduras, so this is as close as I can make it.

I had been craving authentic Thai sticky rice with mango for months and couldn't wait until mango season to try to make my own.  I had no idea that you had to buy actual sticky rice and thought that I could just make it on my own until I reviewed several recipes.  Sadness!  I scoured the major grocery stores near my site but came up dry.  Determined to get my taste of the Thai, I still attempted to make the dish using a recipe that didn't call for "sticky rice", and it didn't turn out too bad :).  I used a half cup less sugar than the recipe called for and it was still a bit too sweet for my taste.  I also didn't make the sauce to pour over it because I don't have tapioca starch but I suppose I could have substituted corn starch for that instead.

Recipe

Adapted from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups uncooked short-grain white rice

2 cups water

1 1/2 cups coconut milk

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 mangos, peeled and sliced

1. Combine the rice and water in a saucepan; bring to a boil; cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer until water is absorbed, 15 to 20 minutes.
2. While the rice cooks, mix together 1 1/2 cups coconut milk, 1/2 cup sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a saucepan over medium heat; bring to a boil; remove from heat and set aside. Stir the cooked rice into the coconut milk mixture; cover. Allow to cool for 1 hour.
3. Place the sticky rice on a serving dish. Arrange the mangoes however you like and enjoy!

My Culinary Adventures: Frozen Bananas and Chocolate Cake

During training, we were all fascinated by the idea of chocolate-covered bananas on a stick, which women would sell right out of their houses for a few cents.  Many of my friends absolutely loved them, as they were a savory treat in the middle of a hot day.  The choco-banano chocolate didn't quite satisfy my sweet tooth, as the chocolate was flavorless (in my opinion) and took away from the banana flavor.  I much preferred the paletas, which were homemade popsicles that came in many flavors such as chocolate, coconut, peanut, and mixed fruit. I bought some metal paleta cups but still haven't found the motivation to make any yet.  I did, however, make some frozen regular bananas on a stick, and they have proven to be a refreshing afternoon snack :).  The bananas from my banana tree were ripe and had all fallen off into the plastic bag I had put over them to keep the bugs away.  I had more than enough for myself so I gifted several to Brian, cooked and baked with others, and froze the rest!

I also baked a chocolate cake one day, using a mix I bought in Progreso, with cream cheese frosting.  I wanted to practice frosting a cake and I'd say my first attempt didn't go too badly, given that I didn't have all the proper cake frosting tools, but I made do.  I only have one round glass baking dish, so I poured the batter into that.  Everything seemed to be going well until I checked on it later and found that the batter had exploded like a volcano all over my toaster oven!  I guess the baking dish wasn't big enough!  Chocolate cake was overflowing over the sides and getting all over the bottom of the oven, but I quickly cleaned that up and let me tell you... half-cooked chocolate cake batter is delish! ;).  The cake did turn out fine in the end and I let it cool overnight.  The next day I frosted it and sprinkled cinnamon and nutmeg over the frosting to give it extra flavoring.  Sliced bananas went around the base and all over the top as the final step.  I shared the cake with the nieces of my host mom and they loved it!  One of the girls asked if I could make the same exact cake for her in May for her daughter's birthday.  I'll have to be careful about the cake explosion next time.  I'm thinking bake it in two instances and then make a layered cake instead.  Hopefully it turns out well!

My Culinary Adventures: Spicy Vegetable Sauté

Usually I like to discover new recipes from regular people who have dedicated their time to creating beautiful food blogs, but sometimes I also like to make stuff up randomly on my own too with whatever I happen to have lying around.  Something quick and easy and delicious!  I whipped this vegetable sauté up one night for dinner and this dish has bite!

Recipe

Original Recipe

Ingredients (depends on how much you want to make)

Green beans, cut
Olive oil
Onions, sliced
Garlic, minced
Tomatoes, diced
Ginger, minced
Soy Sauce
Black Pepper
Sage
Cayenne Pepper
Green Onions

1. Clean and break the ends off the green beans.  Boil about an inch of water in a small saucepan and add the green beans.  Steam over medium-high heat for 10 minutes or until almost tender.  You don't want them too tender because they will cook even more later.
2. In a heated frying pan, add the olive oil and sliced onions and sauté until translucent.  Add garlic and stir.
3. Add in the diced tomatoes and cook until the tomatoes are soft.
4. Add the ginger, soy sauce, spices, and green onions and stir well.  Simmer for a few minutes before serving.

My Culinary Adventures: French Toast

After New Years, my friend and fellow PCV Brian came to visit.  The trip happened spontaneously over chat one day.  We were just talking about getting out of town to visit others near us and he is one of the closest to me so he ended up coming that same weekend!  It was a lot of fun - we cooked, went swimming at the balneario (pool area), walked to Vision Mundial to visit my host mom and play the huge xylophone in the library, made a trip to El Progreso to get some shopping done, and walked around town a bit.  One morning, we made french toast!

Recipe

Copied from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup milk

1 pinch salt

3 eggs

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbs white sugar

12 slices bread

1. Measure flour into a large mixing bowl. Slowly whisk in the milk. Whisk in the salt, eggs, cinnamon, vanilla extract and sugar until smooth.
2. Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium heat.
3. Soak bread slices in mixture until saturated. 
4. Cook bread on each side until golden brown. 
5. Serve hot.

Christmas & New Year's in Honduras 2010-2011

At first I thought staying in Honduras for Christmas and New Year's would be depressing, away from family, away from close friends for the first time in my life... but it turns out I had an amazing holiday with the new friends I've made here :)

I visited an orphanage that has children of all ages, from babies to teens, and that was such a moving visit.  These children were so full of love and extremely well-behaved that it was difficult to say goodbye.  They live in a beautiful house that has everything - hot water, washing and drying machines, full-stocked kitchen, tv room with fireplace, computer room, and bathrooms inside of all their dorm rooms with cleaning responsibilities delegated to a different person on a rotating schedule.  Outside the building is a playground, a small creek, and an enormous variety of fruit trees.  My friend Daniel brought the children a large trampoline too, so they made excellent use out of that.  One of the boys gave me a wooden airplane he had made and painted as a gift, so I had him and another girl write their names on it :)

I also had the chance to visit a village where Daniel is working at.  One of the projects his NGO is doing is helping people construct their own houses out of compressed earth block.  The people do all the work, which stands alongside the idea of if you put your own labor into making something, you'll be more likely to take care of it.  Also, they can train others in how to build houses as well.

I visited with my very first host family and my baker host dad finally taught me how to make his famous galletas de manteca (vegetable shortening or lard cookies).  They're delicious to eat with coffee.  He tried to make a smaller batch since he is accustomed to making the cookies on a larger scale, but the dough ended up too bread-like.   He did call me recently though to tell me that it just needed more water, since he had given me the recipe.  His son who is about 1.5 years old now can walk!  I really missed the whole family and was so glad that I had them as my first host family experience.  Going back I was put in a different room, and didn't have my mosquito net and that's when I realized how much my mentality had changed since first arriving to Honduras in June 2010 and revisiting the same house 6 months later.  As a noob, I was terrified of the potential spiders, ants, and whatever other bugs could be crawling on the walls and bed and flying around the room, and I made a conscious effort to always tuck my mosquito net under the mattress whenever I was in the room sitting or sleeping on the bed.  I even would wake up in the middle of the night and think I saw huge spiders hanging down in front of my face.. that happened for a couple of months and now maybe only once every couple months (pretty strange eh?).  Being back at their house in a normal bed in the other room without a false ceiling didn't bother me at all.  I got so used to sleeping with ants on my bed at my most recent host family's house that the bugs don't really bother me anymore.  I also think that ridding my own house of a cockroach infestation and spiders had desensitized me even more.

Cantarranas dance

I finally arrived in Cantarranas for the feria, or fair, and met up with my host mom there, who had a food tent.  Her children came by later and we played cards and I showed them card tricks.  Most of the weekend was spent with friends, visiting their host families, saying hi to familiar faces, eating, hanging out, and going to the dances in the Alcaldia.  It was great catching up and seeing people again!

I headed back up north for a bit, then headed off to Utila!  I stayed at Alton's Dive Center with Daniel and his niece Kristyn who was visiting from the states.  Morgaine and her boyfriend stayed at another place since they weren't doing any scuba-diving classes. Alton's is a backpacker's dormitory-style hostel with bunk beds in some of the rooms, and shared bathrooms.  There were a ton of tourists there from all over the world, including countries such as Australia, the UK, Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Taiwan, and the U.S., and everyone was super friendly.  I absolutely love the backpacker culture of traveling, meeting new people along the way, hanging out with them, and perhaps traveling together to the next destination.  Even though we came as our own group, we ended up spending a lot of time with the people we met on Utila, and that was a great experience.

View from our room

Kristyn and I did the PADI Open Water Diver Course, which is the beginner's course for people who haven't dove before, while Daniel did the Rescue Diver course.  There were 4 other people in our class, so it was a comfortable size.  It was my very first time diving, and everyone I knew who had done it before absolutely loved it.  Honestly though, I wasn't quite sure what all the hype was about.  Don't get me wrong, it really was a lot of fun and definitely something to experience, and granted I only did the beginner's course so wasn't able to dive toooo deep, but I thought it was just okay.  Maybe in the future I'll get the chance to do more and will grow to love it.  It is an expensive hobby though..  On our dives we saw a sea turtle, an eagle ray, coral crab, stingray, lots of angel fish, and some small banded shrimp, among other creatures.

Nina and me :) She's the daughter of one of the wonderful
ladies that works at Alton's.  So adorable!

At night I'd go out with Morgaine and her boyfriend Tilo to visit the different night spots on the island.  There was one place called Treetanic at the Jade Seahorse. It's a bar in a tree, and the whole place is like a mosaic museum, with bridges, swings, a cave, arches, and a whole array of decorative sections.  Other places we visited were La Pirata, Bar in the Bush, Tranquila Bar, and RJ's restaurant, a Bob Marley-themed restaurant (food wasn't that great), and some other cafes.  Mostly for meals we ate at Alton's small cafe on the dock, and the food there was simply amazing!

Marlin with pineapple salsa

Christmas came around and we celebrated by donning Santa hats and going on a small party cruise for about half an hour or so with everyone who was staying at Alton's.  

Me and Rita

The next day, our group had to leave and head back to the mainland, but the ferry wasn't going to run that day due to the storm coming in, and we really needed to get off the island!  We found out that there was a 3-seater charter plane, and a 7-seater plane available, so added a few more people to our group, waited a few hours, then took the tiny little 7-seater off, and paid much much more than we had planned.  Being on a PC salary, I was not happy at all about this because I spent 4 times more than what I would have spent if the ferry was working.  UGH!  It definitely was a fun experience though, as we all thought we were going to die.  The pilot told us specifically not to touch the doors to open or close, or we may be seeing red (the doors were super close to the propellers), and he had to seat us all by weight, saying "our lives depend[ed] on it".  We made it though!  Had the chance to hang out with a couple of the backpackers for the day and then my vacation ended, so I headed back to El Negrito for a bit before New Years.

I don't really remember what I did back in site so I'll skip ahead to New Years.  I made my way up to the coast again, but this time to a site near La Ceiba.  I almost got screwed getting there because the last bus from the station to the site had left La Ceiba and it was getting dark.  Luckily I asked around and discovered that there was another place to catch the bus up, so I made it!  That was my first time traveling on the bus at night and it was kind of creepy after hearing about all the things that could go wrong after the sun sets.. 

I met up with a bunch of other PCVs at this one restaurant, then we all headed back to the PCV's apartment, where we began the festivities.  Music and dancing and talking ensued.  When it came time for the countdown, some of us took pots and pans down and clanged them against each other in celebration for the new year.  We did the countdown probably 3 or 4 times because everyone's phones said something different, so that was interesting.  It was a great time and we all had a chance to catch up with each other.  

The next day some of us headed to La Ceiba and visited a Garifuna club in La Zona Viva and it truly was an immersive experience.  We were the only Gringos there.  And not only could every one of them dance, and dance well, they seemed to know the lyrics of every single song played, and would jubilantly sing aloud whenever the DJ changed songs, which was about every 30 seconds.  The atmosphere was somewhat clique-y though and we got some dirty looks from people, and firecrackers going off near our feet, but it wasn't so bad.

Overall, I had an exciting and fun-filled Christmas and New Year's break!