(Disclaimer- I am usually opposed to blog posts and any facebook status that tells us what a person ate for lunch. I have even made fun of such posts here before. However, I am making an exception this time.)
The week before I left for Panama I ate like a crazy person. I was pretty sure I was going to starve while I was gone. I am a pretty big eater and I had been told the portion sizes were small and we would eat a little rice and a small bite of meat each day. So before I left I ate three good meals a day and had lots of protein and carbs. Tim was gone the week before, so I ate lots of fish and salad. Jon and I went out for pasta and I grilled huge Porterhouse steaks. Then Tim got home and we ate out a lot and grilled for the 4th.
I was given bad information! The food on the trip was incredible. Now you have to remember I eat everything, will try anything, and was raised on no sugar or snack foods and lots of veggies and rice and beans. So the food in Panama suited me to a T! Also, although the portions were more of a normal size than the super-sized world we live in here in the USA, the meals were served family style. Since almost everyone else was picky and squeamish, that left more for the couple of us who were ready to eat anything!
At first we were still in Panama City so we ate in restaurants. For breakfast each day we went to “The Waikiki” and had the usual fare of pancakes or omelets. There was an odd drink called “guanabana” which looked like a white smoothie. Some of the kids ordered it and loved it- I was tempted, but I am about my morning orange juice like some people are about their coffee so I stuck to OJ. We had dinner at a restaurant called Crepes and Waffles. It was really nice and served just what the name implies. I had a crepe with big chunks of chicken and mushrooms in a fabulous gravy. I then had a Copa Caramel. It was rich, homemade caramel with vanilla ice cream. I was still packing in the calories trying to “fatten up” for my time in the jungle.
On the drive to Cienaguita we stopped for cheeseburgers at a place called California Burgers, of all things. And then we were there. Our first breakfast was croissants, ham and eggs, fruit and OJ. Pretty normal. I was beginning to question what I had been told. Our lunch was ground beef, rice and beans and salad. The meals continued to be good and fairly normal. For breakfast they began to add strange foods like yucca, which I liked and plantains, which I grew up eating. They fixed the plantains in varying ways- baked, fried, sauteed. While growing up my mom had fixed them all of these ways and I like them all of these ways. Every meal included fresh vegetables, medleys of carrots and green beans, potatoes and corn. One time the veggies were in a light, creamy cheese sauce. The kids began to make fun of Josh because he said everything was “delicious,” sometimes before he had even tasted it. But I have to say for the most part he was right!
At one point we had a fish that was not filleted the way it had been at other meals, the way we are used to. Instead it had been cut in big hunks across the body. It had been cleaned but not skinned or de-boned. It was really strong and super full of little bones so it was very difficult to eat and really fishy tasting. Josh dubbed that it was piranha. Now we both knew that piranha are little bitty fish and these were obviously hunks from a big fish, it just sounded funny. No one else was eating it so Josh and I had fun calling it piranha and eventually “piranhaconda,” the hybrid name used in a very bad, recent horror movie. Anyway, it was not very good. (The food, not the movie. Even though I am sure the movie, which I did not see, was probably worse!)
Another day we were given meat which looked like a roast cooked in a crock pot. The kids refused it, but I got a big chunk. It was very fatty, which I am not a fan of, but the meat was tasty enough and the consistency of a roast when you could find a lean piece. When Rhett came by we asked him what kind of meat it was and he said turkey. Now I have had turkey many ways and this was not turkey. And before you get all upset that I am calling Rhett a liar, I am not. I just found it hard to believe. So again, purely for our own amusement, Josh and I began to think of what it could possibly be. When Rhett wandered past us again, we again asked him. This time he told the story of another group that thought this meat to be a roast and one of the members who was allergic to poultry ate it and had a reaction. He assured us it was “poultry”, but did not claim it to be turkey this time. I got another piece since there was plenty and my first piece was mostly fat (something I had never seen on a turkey before!) The second piece was full of quills. Yes, you read right, flat edge hard pieces lined up like the quills of a bird. But small, not like the big feathers on a turkey. Also, the shape of the meat and the position of the bones made me question what I was eating. Pretty soon I gave up, the quills were kind of wigging me out!
The next morning, as I sat and waited on my fellow workers I heard a cooing sound beside me and I turned to look. There on the road beside me was a very large pigeon. And the meal I had eaten the night before came back to me. Had I eaten pigeon?? Not exactly like the pigeons you see on the park statues in the US, but a pigeon none the less?? I told Josh and he and I decided that was going to be our story! When we told the hypothesis to our team leader he seemed put out with us. We had been told it was turkey, we were to take that on faith. Anyway, he pointed out that pigeons eat all kinds of gross things and therefore people would not eat them! I reminded him what goats and pigs eat- yet we eat pork all of the time and I had eaten goat often in Mexico. He walked away, upset with us!
During this time most of the group was making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or crackers with Nutella. These things were on the side board at all time for snacks. If it had not been for those staples from the pantry, these kids and a couple of grown ups, would have starved!
The last meal I will tell you about was a hit with me, but not really anyone else. It looked like pink mashed potatoes with hard red globs in it. It turned out to be mashed potatoes, with shrimp. The red globs were pieces of beets, one of my favorite things, and the beets turned the whole concoction pink. I had three helpings! Josh ate it but kept finding the shrimp tails mixed in and having to pull them out. I only found two tails so I ate and ate and ate. The rest of the group just looked at me oddly as I thoroughly enjoyed something I had never had before.
Our last morning we had some fruit in a bowl that I thought was papaya and guava that they had cut up and seasoned with black pepper. The further down the bowl I got, the stronger the pepper flavor. I finally gave up because the pepper taste was too strong! Why would they have ruined that sweet, lovely fruit with pepper? Later that day I remembered the night before when someone had asked the cook what a large, oddly shaped fruit sitting on the counter was. She held it up and said it was “tamarindo” for in the morning. I remembered back to my days in Puerto Rico at my grandparents, when my mom shared her favorite treat with me, a snow cone topped with a sticky tamarindo syrup. It had made me sick as a dog! I remembered this as my face began to swell and break out in what looked like hives! I can not be sure of this, but I am pretty sure it was my old friend tamarindo that I was having a reaction to!
On the way back to the city, in all of my hideous, swollen glory, we stopped at the beach for an hour. It was a beautiful beach and we had a good meal. I had sea bass and plantain chips. That night back in Panama City we went for pizza. The group downed a dozen or more pizzas before I took some claritin (there was no benadryl!) and we went to bed.
In the Miami airport the next day, when we ended up with a 6 hour layover, I had Chinese food. After I ordered the vegetarian meal, I realized I had just ordered rice and vegetables, what had been the bulk of my food the whole time in the jungle! Oh, well! It was delicious!
Between the hard work and miles of walking in the heat, I did not gain weight. But because of my adventurous spirit and big appetite when outdoors (or indoors for that matter! I just eat a lot-OK??!) I did not lose any either. I thoroughly enjoyed the food of Panama.
