Chapter 20: More about the food

...So, back to the topic of food, after not eating very well for a few days, I was very happy to have a usable kitchen –but then the trick became where to find the food – I moved into my place on a Sunday and the agro market was closed on Monday, but on Tuesday morning bright and early I went to market and came home with bags full of fruit and veg and some beans, but no eggs and no cheese (because there weren’t any) and no meat (because if you saw the meat section in the market you would not have bought any meat either). So, I filled up on fruit for breakfast and cooked all day – and in the evening ate so much beans and corn tortilla and home-made salsa that I made myself feel very unwell – and so learned the important lesson of moderation – and not feasting too much after a famine.

The Fruits (and vegetables) of my trip to the agromercado in Havana

Here we have some freshly home-made corn tortillas (thanks to the corn flour I imported from nicaragua in case of food emergency) freshly sliced guava, pineapple and papaya doused in lime juice...which I have become even more addicted to than I was before I left on this trip - and probably the presence of lime in nearly every dish probably explains why I liked nicaraguan food so much.

Onions and Broccoli - at the market they kept the broccoli behind the counter and just took it out to flash at the odd foreigner walking by - apparently it is not a common veggie in Cuba.

Basil and cilantro - staples of any good meal.

Papaya aka "fruita bomba" in Havana :)

Still, eggs were nowhere to be found except in the form of greasy 2 peso scrambled egg sandwiches that were 90% bun 5% egg and 5% grease. One day I had a grilled cold cut sandwich from the peso cafeteria on the corner – but it turned out to be just a lot of ketchup and mustard and little bit of bottom of the line cold cuts. The Cubans are masters of making a little bit of food look like a lot of food – this sandwich for example – when cut in half and put on display appeared to have ½ an inch worth of meat inside, but really all the meat was strategically placed in the centre of the bun, so when you cut it in half, you saw a lot of meat when really there was almost none. The same goes for pizzas which in some places appear to be huge, but really are thinner than the thinnest crust pizza you ever ate in Canada, but you still feel like a bit of a pig for eating the whole thing – I suppose this is a very important strategy in a land of scarcity – and they do say that half of feeling full is just the psychology of thinking you’ve eaten a lot, but when you start lacking the energy to walk the five blocks from your house to the delightful 5 peso (i.e. 20 cent) ice-cream shop you know you have not been getting quite the amount of protein that you should.




I subsisted on fruit and beans and coffee and corn tortillas and salsa and rum and carbonated water and lime juice for about a week – until I moved into my next casa where they had so many eggs – I couldn’t help but ask if I could buy some from them – they said “of course not – we will give them to you” – and I said “of course not I will buy them” – so we worked out a deal where I got 10 eggs for a dollar and I finally had eggs. I further diversified my protein intake by discovering (or rather, being sent to) a house that sold 25 peso (=$1) boxed lunches consisting of the tastiest pulled pork ever, atop a mountain of congri (Cuban rice and beans) with a few platanos (plantains) and other random fresh veggies thrown in for good measure. With all of these affordable protein and fruit sources now easily at my disposal I felt that my $10/day budget (not including housing) was perhaps actually doable. To top it all off, several days later I discovered some affordable and not unhealthy snack bars made with some kind of sugary paste holding together various forms of nuts and seeds all conveniently wrapped in plastic and ready for a day of walking all around town.

sorting beans turned out to be quite the bonding experience for my and my casa particular family in house #3

My inaugural cuban mojito - the first foray into my Cuban fling with Havana Club.

the 1$ box of delicious pulled pork and congri - it is probably a good thing I had to move out of this house or I would have eaten this almost every day and would likely have gotten very gordita indeed.