Guatemalan Cuisine

I am amazed by Guatemalans. It's like a whole country of Storey Claytons. (at least at my host-family's house) Their diet has amazingly little variation. According to Gina, another American who is living with my host family, it has actually gotten better since I arrived - which is sort of amazing. We're lucky when we don't get eggs and beans for two of the three meals in a day. Mercifully, my host mom only rarely serves the fried plantains here, which are overwhelmingly sweet...in that bad way. Also amazing is how rare fresh vegetables are. They're hard to come by. Perhaps one out of five meals contains something which is recognizable as vegetable. At a restaurant yesterday, Gina and I joked that we should eat the lime on our plate to prevent the onset of scurvy. Apparently subbing in for vegetables? Ketchup. It's on everything. It's been served to me at restaurants on both nachos and salad. (the nachos had more ketchup than cheese) And if that wasn't bad enough mayonnaise is also ever-present – they can't imagine that you might not want it. Hellman's has a huge TV ad campaign here. It involves people on a deserted island celebrating when a helicopter drops a crate of mayonnaise on the beach. Then one guy actually eats it straight out of the little packet. Unbelievable.