Food and Drinks - By Seth

There are lots of different foods and drinks in Colombia. 

One type of beverage that we all like is Natural Juices. These juices are made directly from the fruit. The juice can be mixed with water or milk. My favorite flavor is mora en agua (blackberry mixed with water).  

Me with Mora en leche (blackberry and milk) and my brother with maracuya en leche (passion fruit in milk)

A very common drink you will see in Colombia is panela agua. This is unrefined sugar cane mixed with water. It is best served with lemon. It can also be served hot or cold. 

This is panela that was just pressed out of the sugar cane. 

This was it getting pressed into the bowl. 

We buy our fruits and vegetables from a store called a fruteria. It smells amazing in there because there is a bunch of fruit, unlike the carnicerias where we buy our meat. 

This is a carniceria 

Panaderias also smell great. That is where we buy our bread and baked goods. 

Typical bakery items

Many restaurants here offer a Menu of the Day. (Menu Del Dia) That is where they give you a bunch of food, like meat and soup, a salad, a plantain, and a beverage (like panela agua) for about $5. You get to pick your soup and meat, but the rest is the same for everyone. 

Typical Menu Del Dia

Good Menu Del Dia 

Great Menu Del Dia

My beans

When we were on our multi-day hike, we carried our food with us, not in a lunch box, but in a leaf. We don't eat the leaf, but you can just throw it on the ground when you are done. 

This was it before we opened it and they were heavy

Best chicken I've ever had in a leaf

Street food is sold from carts or little stands in the square or on the side of the road. Some types of street food include empanadas, buneulos, freshly made potato chips, arepas, ice cream, and salchipapas. 

These are salchipapas - hot dogs cut up with french fries with tons of sauces on. Usually they are served with 1-2 hard boiled quail eggs. 

These are food stands.

These are some of the best potato chips you'll ever get. 

One food here that a lot of people like is plantains. They can be used in a bunch of different ways, like salty, sweet, hard, soft, put in stuff, cheese filled, and they are a lot like bananas, but taste more like a potato when they are not ripe, and when they are ripe, they taste more sweet. We are staying on a plantain and coffee farm right now. There are people working on the plantain trees every day. 

This is a plantain tree. They put bags over the fruit to protect it from bugs.

Plantains used as a base for chicken and sauce

Another thing most Colombians like is mazamorra. I hate it. It is milk with corn heated up, and usually there is sugar, but when I ate it, there wasn't sugar so I was a little biased. I should probably try it again with sugar though. 

There is a sweet treat called arequipe. It is a lot like caramel but it is more of a liquid. It tastes amazing. It is in almost every type of dessert, even on ice cream. 

Ice cream with arequipe

There are many different fruits and colors of fruits in Colombia, including passion fruit (what we call alien eggs), orange lemons, guava, soursop, a few different types of bananas, lulo, and more.  

Colombian food is goooooood.