Food - part one of many, I'm sure

First of all, Emily and I have now been here for two weeks!  Five nights in the hotel; seven now in the apartment.  Every day presents new opportunities.  We spend 2-4 hours a day working on our Spanish and have made some progress, but we have a ways to go.  When we aren't downtown chasing official business, we walk the streets of our neighborhood to try to immerse ourselves more into the culture here.  (Don't worry folks; we only walk neighborhoods that we've been told are safe, and we only do so during the day.)

Now that we have the option of preparing our own food, I'm going to share what we've encountered so far.  I'm sure that I will have many posts on food in the days and (hopefully) years to come.  These are my observations after two weeks.

The food in the local restaurants is very good, even if some of it might be unfamiliar to us.  Today's lunch was fantastic: cheese and pasta soup, fried fish, rice, salad and pineapple juice.  $2.50 each.

We're going to do more of our own cooking, so we've also been going shopping.  The local mercados have a large variety of fresh, inexpensive vegetables, so we try to buy what we can from them.  (Cilantro - 25 cents a bunch; limes at 5 cents, whole pineapple for $1.50, and I'm sure those are gringo prices.)  After soaking them in Vitalin to get rid of any nasties, they are good to go.  Emily made salsa tonight (pico de gallo) with fresh tomatoes, onion, cilantro and lime.  Eat your heart out, Baja Fresh!

(Yes, that's our powerful two-burner range in the background.  It's a far cry from our kitchen in California.)

We buy most of our staples at the chain supermarket SuperMaxi.  The variety of items is just a little different from what's available in the US.  We are also buying our meat from SuperMaxi (which many ex-pats do not!).  We have yet to find a local carniceria (butcher shop), however, so we have to make do.  I'm looking forward to it; an 18 ounce package of ham sandwich meat costs $5.45.

Here are some cuts of meat that are available.  Chicken breasts and pork chops are available, but pricey!  (Weights are in kilograms, so multiply the weight by two and add 10% to get pounds).

The hamburger is definitely not lean!

There are plenty of other cuts available: pig hooves, tongue and the like.  This is a mystery beef cut:

Prices are also a little peculiar.  A box of orange juice shows on our receipt as costing $1.3839.  The price rounds correctly, so we pay $1.38.  I guess if you buy too much of something, you'll wind up rounding to that extra penny.

Locally produced items are much more affordable than imported brands: Bounty paper towels are about four times the cost of Familia, a local brand.  The quality isn't quite the same, but it works.  Some things just aren't worth the back-home craving, however:

(There are about ten mini-bars in this bag.)  We're excited to stay with the local offerings, so we're adapting to the available food and methods that are used here.  It will probably a while before we go all-in, however:

Fried scorpions - bon appetit!