Pupusas

I love the food in El Salvador.  Basically they try to create as many different ways of serving corn and beans as possible.  The signature food in El Salvador is the pupusa- a think corn or rice tortilla filled with cheese and/or beans and sometimes meat or shrimp.  Pupusas are eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  They are served with a tomato sauce and cortido- a cabbage, carrot, onion, and jalapeno pepper concoction.  I´m pretty sure  could eat pupusas for every meal for at least a week without getting tired of them.

 

We went to a little restaurant last week and they had dessert pupusas on the menu- rice pupusas filled with fruit jelly.  The idea of dessert pupusas sounded amazing to Julie and I and so we started talking about other possibilities for dessert pupusas.  We thought banana and chocolate sounded like the best possibility.  That night back at our friend Marisol´s house we talked about this awesome idea for a new kind of pupusa and Marisol responded with disgust.  In fact, just about every Salvadoran we have talked to about dessert pupusas has reacted with complete disgust and confusion.  But Julie was very persistent and got Marisol to help us make banana and chocolate pupusas.  We used the rice dough and stuffed chocolate and bananas inside and cooked them on the griddle.  The smell of the melting chocolate filled the air an I could hardly wait for them to be ready.  Marisol gave us each one and she watched in shock as we tried them.  They were SO good!!!  Marisol tried a little but wasn´t convinced that it was the best kind of pupusa in the world.  We´ve been trying to convince Salvadorans that dessert pupusas are going to be the next big thing- no one has been convinced, yet.

 

Last night, the whole group had pupusas for dinner.  The wonderful women who take care of us at the Casa Concordia cooked ¨normal¨ pupusas- cheese and cheese with beans.  Julie and I made dessert pupusas- ones with banana and chocolate and ones with marshmallows and chocolate.  We were all in the kitchen together making pupusas and it was so much fun even though most of the fun was making fun of Julie and I.  Salvadorans love to joke and make fun of people.  Some of the things they say and the things they do might be considered rude or mean by our cultural standards, but thy do it out of love (most of the time).  They made fun of us for making dessert pupusas- it´s just so absurd to them.  And they made fun of our pupusa making abilities.  These ladies have been making tortillas and pupusas all their lies.  Their hands know exactly what to do to create a perfect tortilla and beautiful pupusas.  The tortillas and pupusas I make are often bizarrely shaped- far from the perfect circles they should be.  Our pupusas were judged and the women laughed at our efforts.  Despite being judged and made fun of and laughed at I thoroughly enjoyed making pupusas last night.  I jut love being with those incredible women- they know how to enjoy life, how to find joy in the little things, how to live a life full of love (even if their love isn´t always shown in the way I usually think about showing love).

 

Most of the Salvadorans tried the dessert pupusas, but they still think it is too weird- some of them might have enjoyed them, but not enough to admit that they liked them.