USFQ - GAIAS: Food

A post from Sarah Ziomek

Food. I have been meaning to write this post for a while. First I will explain my eating schedule. On Monday/Wednesday/Friday, we eat breakfast at the university. There is juice, some type of fruit, cereal, bread, PB and J, drinkable yogurt, cheese, granola, and eggs. You better be on time for breakfast because if you are just 5 or 10 minutes late, some of the food may have run out. 43 students can eat a lot of food – we are like locusts.

On Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday/Sunday, I have breakfast at home. I usually have juice or yogurt to drink as well has hot chocolate. My host mom gives me either scrambled eggs, a toasted cheese sandwich, pancakes, or cereal. I also get fruit. The juice is always delicious. My mom usually makes orange juice or tomate de arbol juicd (tree tomato).

On weekdays, IES provides our lunch. Eleven of us came here through IES. There are 4 different restaurants that we alternate through: Kicker Rock, Cormorant, Naty’s, and Rokas y Cactus. We eat at each restaurant the whole week. Lunch consists of soup, then either carne (beef), pescado (fish), or pollo (chicken) with arroz. We also get some wimpy vegetables. Usually it is a tiny bit of lettuce with a slice of tomato and onions or cucumbers. We have freshly made juice to drink. Dessert is usually a slice of fruit. Saturday and Sunday we have lunch on our own. The other students (who aren’t in IES), have lunch on their own every day.

We eat dinner at home on Monday/Wednesday/Friday. My host mom is a really good cook. My meal is juice, arroz (rice), and beef or chicken or fish. I sometimes get a vegetable. Occasionally I get lentils or mashed potatoes.

I have dinner with the other students on Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday/Sunday. We eat at the same place that we IES students eat lunch at that week. At dinner we have juice, rice, and fish/chicken/beef. We also get some wimpy vegetables again. Dessert is a piece of fruit.

Have you noticed a pattern? I eat rice at 2 out of 3 meals each day. I LOVE rice. I have not tired of it, but lots of the other students are really sick of it. Ha ha!

Kicker Rock is owned by Annie’s host family. Cormorant is the least liked of all the restaurants. They give us the smallest juice glasses. A few times dinner was the same thing we IES kids had eaten for lunch, with the leftover meat just served fried. One time we had gross tuna spaghetti with rice and bread. [Here in Ecuador rice is a perfectly acceptable side to spaghetti.] Rokas y Cactus is owned by Rob’s family. Naty’s is owned by Alexandra’s family. They have the best vegetables. A few times we got a big serving of broccoli!!

Now here are some interesting tidbits about food:

-There are mandarinas (tangerines) and naranjas (oranges). We get both to eat. The oranges here are different than our oranges. They are super juicy (perfect for making juice, but very messy to eat).

-Cheese. There is one type here. It is wet and spongy. And basically flavorless. And it doesn’t melt (what cheese doesn’t melt??). But I still like it. It is used in soup, or in toasted sandwiches, and eaten plain.

-Juice. The fresh juice is delicious. Unfortunately, you just get one glass of it at meals at restaurants. Some of the glasses are different sizes. All the students at a table would fight to get the biggest glass of juice. ha ha Juice also must be “rationed” at meals. It is hard to save juice when you have a small glass and it is so good, but it is important to have a sip or two to wash everything down.

-Sharing food. We all share food. Even soup (which is usually a more “personal” thing). Nothing goes to waste. If there is any food left on your plate that you don’t want, you just pass the plate around the table.

-Papaya. Papaya (in my opinion) is the grossest fruit there is. Most of the students don’t like it, but a few do. It is extremely disappointing when you get papaya for dessert, or worse, you get papaya juice to drink (especially if you are expecting mango juice when you take a sip). Most of my friends have stories of getting it for breakfast and having to choke as much of it down, leaving some on their plate. (You want to eat some so as not to be rude, but hope your mom will get the hint that you don’t like it if you don’t eat it all).

-Foods we don’t like. We all occasionally get foods we don’t like. We feel bad telling our families we don’t like them, so we try to eat them, but that is hard sometimes. So there are inevitably days when we have to get rid of food. One day I met one of my friends on the walk to school. We both had food wrapped up in a napkin to throw away at school (rolling it up in a napkin and throwing it away somewhere else is the most common trick). My friend Devin said he doesn’t know what he would do if his family didn’t have dogs (he feeds food he doesn’t like to the dog). Devin actually put soup in his pocket once. I didn’t think it was possible to put SOUP in your pocket. It was hilarious hearing him tell the story, but he got some fish soup that he just couldn’t make himself eat. His family was super excited about the soup, so he felt bad about not eating much. He scooped out hunks of fish and other stuff in the soup, rolled it up in a napkin, and put it in his pant pocket. He said the dog kept sniffing and licking his pants, and he was trying to shoo it away so his family wouldn’t notice. Eventually he got to school, forgot to throw away the soup, and remembered it later when it started dripping down his pants.

-Chifles. Chifles are chips made out of platano (plantain). They are so addicting. Once you start eating them, it is hard to stop. I will have to make some when I go home.

-Panadería (the bakery). We all love to go to the bakery after dinner some nights. Everything is really cheap. Ex: pan dulce (just a sweet, yeast roll) is $.10 at the bakery by my house.

-Ají. This is a spicy sauce used on everything. I don’t like spicy sauces, but everybody else does. Ají can be used to cover up a bad taste or to flavor something flavorless.

-Ice cream truck. The guy has learned that he can make big bucks if he comes by our school. Ice cream on the beach = wonderful.

-Empanada lady. She is at the school every Sunday afternoon. Her empanadas are the best I have had. $1 each.