Buying Veggies….Honduran Style
While we buy most of our groceries at the grocery stores in La Ceiba (which, incidentally, have all recently been purchased by Walmart), we try to get as much as we can locally. The Veggie Guy (actually there are several) drives around town selling his wares out of the back of his pickup. He has a loudspeaker that blares out a recording of what he’s selling, so you have plenty of notice when he’s coming. The local, easy-to-grow fruits and veggies, such as plantains, bananas, and watermelon, are about a third of US prices, and most other stuff is about half. Eggs are about the same, and, unfortunately, we can’t convince the local stray chickens to lay eggs in our yard. Apparently they are already laying elsewhere.

Fresh milk is about $1.25 a gallon. A few of the local dairy guys have a co-op, which sells milk and makes and sells butter and cheese. I think the butter and cheese require a Honduran upbringing in order to appreciate, but the milk, while somewhat "green," is much better than anything at the grocery store. We have a milk pasteurizer, which makes the whole process pretty slick.

Pulperias are tiny stores that have a little of everything in miniscule packages. Because the economy here operates on such a small scale, people don’t have enough money at one time to buy the quantities of food normal to American grocery shopping. So, one can buy bullion cubes one at a time, an individually packaged tablespoon of baking powder, or a single roll of toilet paper. Every neighborhood has a pulperian within quick walking distance, and most of them are run out of their owners’ houses. Our pulperia is two houses down from us, and it is owned by a lady named Nora.