One Thing I WILL Miss

Tears, legitimate tears are streaming down my face. I'm not sad, or overly happy, just have some major pain due to the stingy of my eyes. My nose is running and I have to take a time out from my cooking to go to the bathroom to get a tissue...or five. Yes, I am cooking. No I did not burn myself or anything, I am simply cooking with the freshest vegetables I will probably ever have in my life. The stars in tonight's dish are onions, plain 'ol regular white onions that I've cooked with lots of times in the U.S.. I swear that cutting onions has never hurt me so much. I'm not kidding when I say I look like I've just been at a funeral. One slice of that knife and my tear ducts start going loco. But in those tears of stingy eye pain are a few tears of happiness because I am about to eat yet another amazing meal of farm fresh veggies.

The kicker being, their price. The market usually charges less than 100 lempira for a whole bundle full of vegetables. We're talking your green and red peppers, onions, potatoes, carrots, oranges, limes, cucumber; whatever the recipe calls for. I usually buy 3 avacados at the local market for I think 18 lempira? Can that be right? Meaning, one avacado is 6 lempira aka about 25 cents. Have I ever mentioned how much I love avacados. Guacemole is one of those foods that I will eat no matter if I am filled up to maximum capacity. There are few other foods that have this hold over me: pie (apple, pumpkin, banana cream), warm, homemade chocolate chip cookies, mashed potatoes, tollhouse cookie ice cream sandwich (preferably at an A's baseball game) and guacemole.

Now, growing up in California I have definitely seen some fresh fruit in my day. But even in California it can be difficult to find the perfect avacado, ripe and ready to go upon purchase. Often they are too hard, too soft, or too expensive. And Michigan and New York? Forget about your guacemole. Probably the reason the Mexican food is subpar there as well.

But I digress...

Bottom line: Central America=good produce. Every day our taxi takes us by the market...really close to our house actually. Admist the hunks of meat being carried around in a wheel barrow and farmers setting up shop, you see a rainbow of tropical fruit and vegetables coming in from the country by the truck loads.

It's definitely something that will be missed upon my return. I think I'll have to stay in California for a little while at least, just to ween myself off of the fresh produce. And now, if you excuse me, I'm off to eat mi cena deliciosa. Buen Provecho!