Ode to Baleadas

Ay, baleadas. The Honduran national street food. Pick a city and, breakfast to latenight, whenever the craving strikes, you'll find busy assembly-line stands lining the streets. Meet the cast. The all important tortillera, stretching dough wide and thin, tossing it on the comal. She attends the comal, tossing readied tortillas into baskets nearer the women working the frying pans, who, in between stirring the beans, eggs, and meats, snags orders from the hungry masses hovering around. Then you pay the guy who hangs out, inhales the wonderful scents, and collects money. I want that job.

Fat, hand tossed flour tortillas, smeared with an oil-rich refried bean paste, then loaded with your choice of colorful decorations. Scrambled eggs. Crumbled cheese. Avocado spooned from its flesh. Curls of red onions or chimol. Juicy strips of tender beef freshly speared from the oil bath if you're feeling carnivorous. Maybe an extra tortilla, browned with bulging air pockets, hot off the comal. All for no more than L$25 fully decked out. Now my five day binge of nothing but baleadas and the occasional bagged mango doesn't sound so mad, huh?

Not only that, but my favorite baleada outpost in La Ceiba offered this greasy, to my knowledge nameless variation. The flour tortilla was tossed, then dumped into boiling oily depths to brown and balloon, until it looked like the crust of a Personal Deep Dish Pizza. Then it was treated like a baleada, save the folding, loaded with toppings. Like a big, brown and garnished edible sponge of cooking oil. Wonderful.

Currently I'm on a Tajadas con Carne Molida binge. Mountains of fried plantain chips, covered in a sauce of potato bits, sauce, and ground beef. 'Nuff said, no?

A Foodie's Future

I'll wake with high school teachers tomorrow, long before birds begin chirping, and devour my final bowl of American cereal for a cruel, indefinite period of breakfast deprivation. If living in fùtbol-obsessed lands swarming with latina lovers, and brimming with cheap cervezas to accompany endless processions of tacos y enchiladas al pastor, can't quell my morning lust for Tony the Tiger, Lucky the Leprechaun and their poor, mascot-less granola cousins, Tucan Sam might invade my wet dreams. If that happens, I may soon materialize on the nightly news, a CNN blurb describing an unkempt glossolalist ransacking the cereal aisle at the Super Wal-Mart nearest the Mexico/US border, making whole grain angels amidst a field of Frosted Shredded Wheat and Kashi Go Lean Crunch.

Tonight I bid adieu to friends at Lempira, a fantastic Honduran eatery that has been my favorite Charlotte restaurant from my first bite. The piquant, open-faced ground beef enchiladas, garnished with cabbage and hard boiled egg, are a tantalizing departure from the equally delicious Mexican fare that is too often assumed to be representative of all cuisines south of the border. The sublime platanos fritos are dessert disguised as a side dish, so nobody will think it excessive when I proposition Cookout or Chick-Fil-A for a breakup milkshake on the ride home.

For now, all I can do is sit on the porch, enjoying the storm, a procrastinator anxiously awaiting last minute UPS delivery of my travel backpack. For days, all its contents-to-be have been arranged on my bedroom floor, homeless and forlorn. I ponder a detailed statement from my health insurance provider, mysteriously documenting two CAT scans instead of the one anticipated, courtesy a drunken spill while celebrating Kerry's graduation from Michigan months ago. Is my head so bulbous it exceeds the normal capacity of top-notch medical equipment? Will it stand out as a special prize to the unidentified culprits behind the mass decapitation and body-barbecuing that was recently unearthed in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula? Will I achieve legendary status like the Chupacabra, perhaps earning a price upon my head?

If, indeed, I am ever decapitated, I wish my severed head to serve as a birthday piñata -- Fireballs for my eyes, Twizzers Pull-N-Peel for my brains -- in honor of the years of babysitting and camp counseling that are funding this early retirement.