Food.

My body seems to have pretty much adjusted to the food here. I will get cravings for beans and rice, and my body doesn’t crave as much as it used to the fruits and vegetables that were readily available back home. There has only been really on food that didn’t sit with me well. It’s called Mondongo.
In my first few months in site, I went to visit a nurse that I work with. They were eating Mondongo soup. I had a hard time with its smell let alone even eating it. It was this stinky tough oddly colored meat floating in a sparse broth accompanied by a couple vegetables. Trying to be polite I quietly gagged the hard rubbery/sponge like substance down. I swore to myself that I would never again put my self in a Mondongo-eating-situation ever again.
Well yesterday I went to visit with my old host family, and to my great disappointment, they were eating, ta-da, Mondongo soup. I had forewarned my host mother that I previously had a traumatizing experience with the said soup. She informed me, that this soup had been properly prepared and that ¨you don’t eat Mondongo soup from just anyone.¨ We had walked a few blocks across town in the blazing heat (we’re getting into summer here high 80s 90s at night) to the mother in law of her daughter who cooks and sells beans, cheese, tortillas and on this specific day, mondongo soup.
So there I was sitting terrified at the table (Apparently I wasn’t doing such a great job at hiding my contempt for the soup) sipping at the broth. When people make soup here, they keep the vegetables and meats in large pieces that are taken out of the soup and placed on a plate to cut up and eat. The first thing out the broth was the Mondongo. It sat there squishy and white doing everything but tempt me. I finally worked up the courage to try the meat once it´d cooled down and assumed a more solid form, and to my surprise, hey it wasn’t so bad! The soft squishy brownish-purple part isn’t the best, but the white rubbery bit actually tastes kind of like chicken. So I guess the take away lesson from Mondongo is that hey, sometimes you just get a bad first impression, and it never hurts to give it a second chance.

Oh I didn’t mention; Mondongo is the stomach of a cow. It has to be prepared and cleaned properly or else it comes out hard and stinky, when you want it to not smell and be nice and soft. I’m not going to order it when I go to a restaurant, but if it’s offered up as a free lunch, I now know that I’ve got at least a 50/50 chance I can stomach it (no pun intended).