Sunday: The Day of Food

Ok, so Sunday is really the day of rest, but food and rest usually go well together for me, as they did today.  :)  

Our day started off with an amazing pancake breakfast, courtesy of the McCanns, another family on Andy's team.  Normally, they have pancake breakfast every Saturday, but they saved it for Sunday so I could participate -- thanks guys!  (As a side note, they are now the third family I've met that has a pancake breakfast tradition on weekends.  My roommates and I did it a couple of weeks ago, and it was wonderful.  I've decided I'm pretty much a fan of any family traditions that revolve around food and plan to implement a lot of them some day.)  We hung out at their house and I made fast friends with their 2-year-old Lucy, who announced five minutes after meeting me that I was her big sister.  Who knew?  

After pancakes, we went to church.  (For those of you who think I'm about to break with the theme of the day, don't worry -- there was food at church, too.)  Andy's team has been doing a little "church hopping" since they spend most Sundays out in Armenia Bonito, the community they serve in, but they also are looking for a church to attend in the city of La Ceiba.  As a result, we attended a new church this Sunday, and were incredibly warmly welcomed.  (I got hugged and kissed about 15 times on my way into church; I was also holding Lucy, which meant a lot of extra attention but unfortunately also a lot of questions in Spanish that I could not answer.  I could tell they were asking if Lucy was my daughter, so I just started shaking my head vigorously and saying no, which they probably thought was a little abrupt.  This whole "not knowing the language" thing is kind of tough!)  The pastor was especially excited to have "our friends from the northern country" and proceeded to make us feel welcome by randomly shifting into English throughout his sermon -- often in mid-sentence, and often shifting back to Spanish mid-thought.  Afterwards, everyone wanted to talk to us (mostly to hold Lucy and her little sister Elly) so, once again, I got to practice my one Spanish phrase:  "No hablo espanol.  Puedo comprender, pero no puedo hablar."  I'm pretty proud of it, actually, but it is a conversation ender.  Thankfully, to break up the awkwardness while we were conversing, many church members were bringing us plates full of food -- some fried thing stuffed with cheese, crackers, and soda.  As soon as you finished one plate they brought you another, so by the end it was enough to call "lunch."

Then again, this is the day of food, so of course we did not call this lunch -- we went out for lunch!  Since Josh (Andy's friend and housemate) had use of the truck, we ended up driving down towards the ocean to a restaurant that Josh, Jamie (their other friend from Boston), and Andy had all been to before that they said had good "Ceiba food" (by which they meant local food).  We got yummy shish kebabs with rice, beans, tortillas, and salad.  Amazing, but way too much food -- we all went home in a delicious food coma!  I wish I had gotten a picture of the ocean but I forgot my camera; we will hopefully be going back Wednesday.

Once back at home, Andy and I rested for awhile (read:  watched more of The Office) and then decided to go for an adventure.  Of course, this adventure, again, involved food.  On my flight in I noticed a large number of crop fields, and I asked Andy what they were.  He explained that they were probably pineapple since there's a huge Dole factory in La Ceiba, so ever since then I've fixated on the idea that we were going to buy fresh pineapple.  Andy tried to explain to me that the Dole factory exports all the best pineapples, but I was having none of it, so off we treked to a fruit stand a few blocks away from his house.  

Upon arriving, Andy and I realized that neither of us really had any idea how to select a pineapple, so we started picking them up and smelling them.  The owner of the stand immediately came over and warned us "not to squish them" (they're hard on the outside, just in case anyone else was confused, because I was).  My polite but naive brother then decided to share with her, "We don't know how to select a pineapple.  How do you know which ones are good?"  Her response:  "Oh, all of my produce here is good.  Every single one.  They're all good."  Interestingly, the same was true of the mangoes and the plantains.  Amazing how we stumbled on the best fruit stand in the city, and on our first try!  (Andy would like me to note, for the record, that this was his first time at the fruit stand.)  Nevertheless, we did select a pineapple that actually looks pretty good, although it still needs to ripen a little bit, and I happily walked the rest of the way home through a sudden rainstorm satisfied with my achievement.  Here is a picture of me, victorious but wet, back in Andy's kitchen with my pineapple prize: 

 

After that adventure we decided to cook dinner, but before dinner must always come dessert.  (As my mom taught us when we were very young, you never know when Jesus will come back, so it's always a good idea to eat dessert first.  I'm not totally sure about the theology behind that statement, but I definitely think it proves that, nutritionally, my mom had her priorities straight.)  When I asked Andy what he wanted me to bring from the States, he responded, without hesitation, "chocolate chips."  I was woried about getting them here, so I froze them beforehand and, surprisingly, both bags arrived in tact.  In celebration, we made chocolate chip cookies.  The process was a little rough (I wanted to eat all of the batter, as the absolutely terrifying picture proves), but Andy did a great job holding the operation together and the end result, I have to say, was delicious. 

After cookies were in the oven, we made dinner.  I believe that I have existed for a purpose today, in that I informed both Josh and Andy that boiling vegetables was not the way to go.  I also introduced them to a steamer, which, amazingly, they already had.  (They had been wondering why their colandar had such a strange shape.)  We did not yet figure out how to bread chicken well (it just tasted like chicken and dry crackers) so if anyone knows the secret, shoot me an email!  After dinner, Andy was cleaning up and I heard a shout from the next room.  Josh and I ran in to discover this sight:

Apparently, Andy dropped the flour, which somehow exploded absolutely everywhere (including up his nose?!)  After cleaning up. we headed with our cookies back to the McCanns to watch -- you guessed it -- The Office.  Andy was the one who got me hooked on this show in the first place, so I really do believe this is a good use of my time with him :) and it was fun to hang out with his teammates.  

And now, the food is over and it is time for bed.  I was a little worried about sleeping in Honduras (I do not deal well with heat) but I had one of the best nights of sleep I've had in weeks!  A cool evening breeze through the windows, a fan circulating it around the room, birds chirping outsided of my window in the morning -- lovely.  :)  Hasta manana!