American Cooking in Honduras

Sausage biscuits for breakfast . . . sounds great, doesn't it? We think so too, although the process of producing these for our family takes several people a couple of hours. We start with the ground chicken, and a recipe which adds spices until the cooked meat resembles breakfast sausage. This meat is made up into patties and browned, while the biscuits are mixed up from scratch and baked.

I feel a little guilty saying this, because so many people in the states are giving up convenience foods to make healthier homemade food . . . but some days I just wish I had a package of frozen breakfast sausages and a can of instant biscuits (well, several packages and cans for my family). Hah - or an occasional trip out for a fast food breakfast!

In my efforts to keep the family fed and happy, I like to try new recipes, and I am always watching for those which 1) sound reasonably healthy, 2) will be considered tasty and acceptable by my family, and 3) include ingredients I can purchase here in Honduras or for which I can find substitutions. If the recipe calls for canned beans, I can cook up a batch of dried beans first. If it calls for frozen or canned vegetables, I can sometimes purchase the vegetables fresh, and prepare them in a similar manner to the canned/frozen variety. If it calls for boneless, skinless chicken breasts . . . we can turn a lot of frozen chickens into enough breasts to serve the whole family . . . but I rarely make those recipes, as that is just too much work. All of this translates into a lot of extra time and effort. A recipe which calls itself a "30 minute, one skillet meal" might actually require me to start a day ahead (soaking beans, or thawing the whole chickens for parts, for instance), and will likely require a lot more than one skillet!

When I notice that I am discarding a lot of useful sounding recipes because of not having access to one certain ingredient, and I can't find a local substitute, I try to see if I can get that ingredient from the states, in a non-perishable version. For instance, we recently bought a package of powdered buttermilk, and we are excited about making buttermilk biscuits, and other recipes which call for this specific ingredient. We get some special spices (like Old Bay seasoning) brought down from the states.

Some other ingredients we have learned how to make without using any expensive imports. We love lasagna, but without ricotta cheese it just wasn't the same. We now know how to make our own cheese (it is something like a dry cottage cheese) that works just great in lasagna. When we lived on Guanaja, in order to make lasagna, we made homemade noodles, homemade sauce, and homemade cheese. It was a rare, all day event!

I am just getting started in learning how to make some other cheeses, because we can get local milk relatively inexpensively, but hard cheeses we have to get from San Pedro Sula (we only get there for shopping every other month or so), and they are horribly expensive. I'm excited about learning this new skill! I did have to order a few items to get the cheesemaking process started, but these are small items, mostly powdered, which will be added in to start the chemical/bacteriological processes.

Just so no one feels the need to chide me about this, we do eat the local foods, as well. We love empanadas, baleadas, tamales, beans and rice, plantains, etc, but not all the time. The family enjoys both Honduran and American foods, so I try to create meals which satisfy both desires. But many Honduran foods I can purchase ready-made, and they will be better than the version I would cook, for a very low price. So, I don't cook Honduran very much. Cooking American foods is enough of a challenge!

I am trying to get back into the habit of cooking in big batches, and freezing the extra prepared foods for future meals. Now that we have the big chest freezer (a gift from a team which visited in April, from Countryside Christian Center in Tampa), we can do this, as I used to do when we lived in the states. The little freezer above the fridge is barely big enough for our family's ice and basic frozen storage needs.


Ooooh, something new and exciting arrived on the food front this evening - Bethany discovered some tiny berries growing on the property. With a lot of effort she collected about 2 cups full, enough to put into a small batch of muffins or pancakes. They are edible, and resemble blueberries. The local name (pardon the crudity) is cat's eggs. I don't know the scientific name. I suppose they might even be a kind of wild blueberry. We just love finding a local food source . . . especially when it's free!