A little about the food

We haven't done a whole lot other than work in the past few weeks, so I'll talk about some of the food in Ecuador.  First, not including meals we have made ourselves, I can probably count the number of meals we've had that didn't include rice on one hand.   Everything comes with rice, even the spaghetti.   A common breakfast, especially for working class people, is rice with stewed chicken or beef, a little bit of salad, coffee and fruit juice.  It's usually only about $1.50 to $2.00.  For a breakfast on the run or quick snack, cooked hominy with Chicharron is availble everywhere on the streets.  Chicharron is fried pork scraps, kind of like cracklins but still chewy.  I (Johnny) prefer these breakfasts more than just eggs and bread because they are more flavorful and filling.  For lunch, some type of broth based soup is served first, then a choice of stewed chicken, beef, or sometimes goat and rice.  Lunch is very similar to breakfast, but with the addition of soup and no coffee.  Dinners aren't as important as lunch and breakfast.  I think they just eat whatever's around, like bread or crackers or something.  Some of the restaurants that serve the described breakfast and lunch, will also serve more or less the same thing for dinner too.  I haven't seen anything too crazy as far as weird foods.  The most different thing I have tried would either be guatita, which is cow stomach stewed in a peanut based sauce, or grilled intestines.  Random chicken part soup is pretty popular too.  I've had chicken head, neck, heart, liver, kindney, and feet in the soups.  I still need to try the grilled guinea pig, but it's kind of expensive.  There´s an area near our house where people set up street food stands and sell all of this, minus the guinea pig.  We tried  it for the first time last weekend and we will be going back.  It was all very good.  You can see exactly where we ate by watching the show No Reservations : Ecuador.  Here's the link.  It's about 4 minutes 30 seconds into it.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSIBerTO0Sw

There is a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and most are pretty cheap.  Everything that can be found in the states can be found here, with the exception of good apples.  The have apples, but they are expensive and not that great.  There's also many fruits I have never tried or seen before.  My favorite it the chirimoya, which is somewhat related to a pawpaw but sweeter.  Unfortunately they are expensive in Quito.  Other fruits I have never seen before are pepino dulces, taxos, ganabana, granadillas, uvillas, tomate de arbol, and probably some others I don't know the name of, or am forgetting.  Nothing too unusual in the vegetable department.  Fava beans are really common and inexpensive.  Chochos, or a lupin beans are indigenous to the Andes and are also very common.  Another different vegetable is the yuca.  It's a root that is kind of like a potato.  It's the root that tapioca comes from.

A common snack food  is empanadas.  There are empanadas verde, which are made of mashed green plantains and stuffed with cheese or meat, and there are empandas viento (wind).  These are puffy, fried dough with cheese in it and sprinkled with sugar.  Bolons are also common, which are the same ingredients in empanadas verde, but rolled into a ball instead of into a pocket.  Amber and I tried to make empanads, but they failed and ended up being bolons.  On our walk home, we pass people on the street who sell grilled meats on sticks or grilled yellow (sweet) plantains.

Amber with our haul

While there are large supermarkets in Quito, we try to buy most of our food from a large outdoor market in the north side of the city.  The prices here are cheaper and sometimes can be negotiated.  It's also a better atmosphere, and there are no checkout lines.  Last time we got 5 pounds of potatoes, 2-3 pounds of tomatoes, 19 bananas, 24 carrots, 6 avocados, 10 kiwis, 2 heads of garlic, 3 lbs of rice, a bag of fava beans, a bag of chochos, and 19 onions for $10.50.

Foods we miss:   Pie, good peanut butter, English muffins, thick pizza, Nestle hot chocolate mix, Morning Star ribs my mom's cooking and dad's pot roast.

Interesting Fact: The stray dogs in the cites are very good at negotiating traffic.  We see many strays every day we walk to work, but have never seen one that has been hit by a car.  When a dog needs to cross the street, he looks both ways and weaves between the crazy drivers.  One dog that Amber is particularly fond of, will cross a very busy traffic circle just to use the bathroom.  Sadly, the cats are not as smart or lucky.