Horchata

Horchata is great stuff!!! I tried it the first time when some of my ESL students brought it to class. It's a rice/milk drink and you can buy it in bottles or in powdered form or even make it yourself. We got the powdered cinnamon flavored, this is pretty traditional. Just add a couple of tablespoons to water and stirr. Super refreshing--I'll be drinking this in the summer for sure. It comes in all sorts of flavors too. You can buy it at most Mexican grocery stores.

Honduran Dinner

The results are in and tripe is officially terrible. Even the cats wouldn't touch it. You think the picture below looks bad? Our tripe came in frozen squares. Dave bought the smallest amount he could, but it was still more than a lifetime supply. Since the "Sopa de Mondango" sounded good otherwise, I cheated and made the soup without tripe, then fried up a little on the side. We each took soup and sprinkled on about 4 molecules of tripe a piece. Maybe there are better ways to cook it. My reciepe said to simmer it with lemon for about 2 hours. Another reciepe said to fry it in oil. I did both, and it was rubbery, vaguely fishy smelling and stil a sickly yellow color.

The rest of the dinner was fine. We went to the Mexican grocery store and bought all kinds of fun stuff for it. Cassava (yucca) root and a green plantain for the soup, Masa Harina tortilla mix (made from ground corn, but looks like white flour. Supposedly, this is the authentic stuff they use in Honduras). Mexican cheese and Mexican sour cream. The sour cream is just a little milder than the US kind. We made tortillas then put refried beans, sour cream and cheese on them, folded them in half and called them "Boletas." Delicious, and with the soup they made a wonderfully satisfying meal. We ate dinner while watching a kid's video about Central America.

The best part was dessert--the internet called this Honduran quesadillas, but it was nothing like what I'd recognize as a quesadilla. Instead, it's a really rich cake made with 1/2 rice flour, parmesan cheese and sesame seeds. Here's the receipe from allrecipes.com Delicious!

I made, (or rather Catherine made) 1/2 this receipe and it filled a 9x9 pan nicely. 1 1/2 C margarine

3 cups white sugar

2 cups flour

1 cup rice flour

1 TBL baking powder

6 room-temp eggs

2 cups lukewarm milk

2 cups grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 cup white sugar 1/4 cup flour 1/4 cup sesame seeds. Preheat oven to 350. Beat margarine, and 3 c sugar till fluffy. Add eggs one at a time mixing well. Combine 2 c flour, rice flour and baking powder and add them alternately with the milk. Slowly stir in Parmesan cheese. Pour batter into greased baking dish. In small bowl, mix the 1/2 c suar, 1/4 c flour and sesame seeds, sprinkle evenly over batter in cake pan. Bake 45 min at 350.