Food. So much glorious food.

It's been a long time since we last posted a food update, and needless to say, we've been experiencing a lot of good, tasty meals. Here are a few of the highlights.

Esteli and Sontule

Mini-novelty cauldrons with a candle inside, and bubbling refried beans with a mozzarella-style cheese on top. Served with tostones - squashed and lightly fried savoury plantain.

Burgers - there's no McDonald's anywhere in Nicaragua, outside of the capital Managua, but most places do have a good independent burger restaurant. This is the first time we ate burgers in Nicaragua, and tasty they were too.
An impressive carbohydrate loaded meal in Sontule - rice with veg; spaghetti with tomatoes and oil; boiled melanga (centre) - a nice root vegetable, although can be a bit cloying; beans; and an ayote (like a watery squash/courgette) sliced and fried with egg on the outside and cheese in the middle.

Visa trip to Costa Rica
Chinese food was everywhere in Liberia in the north of Costa Rica. This restaurant was recommended to us and was a popular place serving up massive portions for about $5. It wasn't as gloopy as Chinese food can be in the UK, but it was certainly different to a traditional Nicaraguan meal. Above - noodles with prawns and vegetables in soy sauce, and below, breaded fish in a tomato-based sauce.

Seafood by the Pacific
Delicious lobster. The cheese slices wouldn't be an obvious addition in the UK but here they are seen as fancy.
Fantastic seafood platter to share. Fish, squid, clams, octopus, king prawns and lobster tails.

Seafood soup loaded with crab, squid, octopus and fish. It was very hard to get any meat from the crabs but they added great flavour and the bits were good to suck on.
Barbequeing with Jan and Nick. It's always good to cook for ourselves sometimes. We produced a very agreeable pile of steak, sausage and chargrilled vegetables.

Sweet treats
New sweets (to Simon) can be just as exciting as gourmet meals. These assorted-coloured sweets all tasted of banana - the artificial flavour that you get in those banana-shaped foam sweets at the pick n mix at the cinema or Wilko's.

In the East of Nicaragua, a new crop of maize is producing some yummy food. This atol is in between blamanche and semolina pudding in consistency, but with a fresh, maize flavour and topped off perfectly with a sprinkling of cinnamon. A treat like this perks up any long bus journey - a lady got on the bus to sell them at a bus stop for around 15p each. Maybe we should introduce this into the UK.

They look like grapes or blackcurrant, but they are neither. They are coyolitos - harvested from a certain kind of palm tree, they are incredibly sour but enjoyed by Nicaraguans with a good dose of salt. We could only appreciate them in a heavily sweetened juice.

The Caribbean

Food is very different here to the rest of Nicaragua with strong influences from Africa and other Caribbean communities. It's out with the tortillas and in with fish and seafood cooked in coconut milk.

'Run down' is the traditional seafood soup in the region - fresh fish is cooked in coconut milk along with yucca/cassava, plantain and melanga. We enjoyed this one with local community guide Orlando (pictured) and family after a trip to his land.

Delicious breakfast for £1.50 each in Bluefields port with great views over the dock and lagoon. Fresh fruit, pancakes, cereal, freshly squeezed orange juice, and unfortunately, instant coffee.
This fruit is called an apple, but it is quite different to any apples we know. It's definitely not a direct relative of the apple as it has one big, lumpy stone in the middle. However, it does share a similar taste, quite sharp and full flavoured with a light, crisp water-filled consistency. Very refreshing.
Orland stood next to an 'apple' tree. His son was up the tree knocking down apples with a big stick.
Munching on an energy-boosting sugar cane. A treat for local kids and sweet-toothed tourists.
An assortment from the bakery: coconut bun - a bit like a cinnamon swirl but minus the raisins and with a light coconut flavour; coconut bread - white bread baked with coconut milk, so delicious when fresh; and sticky, spiced ginger bun with raisins.
Fresh prawns in coconut milk, garlic and tomato. The prawns here are harvested straight from the lagoon and the sea using circular nets thrown by hand from small, wooden canoes. It's lovely to eat prawns of all different sizes as the ones bought in the UK, which all seem to look alike, are a reminder of the shrimp farms they come from, which are very damaging to the environment.
This is a pineapple plant. A quite improbable looking spiky shrub to be the producer of such a delicious fruit, which grows out of the middle and then sits surreally atop the plant.
A very rich prawn salad with tomatoes and cucumber, cooked with coconut milk, butter and mayonnaise. The coconut bread served with it was some of the nicest bread we have ever tasted.
A spicy beef patty served hot from a basket at the port in Bluefields as I (Simon) had just eaten a big breakfast, I limited myself to two. They cost around 15p each and were brilliant.