Ham

Ham and cheese everywhere, I think I will become a ham. Ham is the most common filling here, and for me it is sort of serves as an example of the lack of healthy and familiar food options that I have found so far. Venezuelans have a few national foods that they eat frequently for breakfast and dinner, the smaller and simpler meals in the day. Lunches include soup, meat and rice and either a noodle salad or cabbage type salad, but the breakfast and dinner foods that are most common all commonly come with ham, except one. The Empanada, which is a fried pocket filled with beef, chicken or cheese are the solo hamless breakfast and dinner food. Arepas, English muffin like biscuits made out of refined cornmeal similar to the cornmeal in grits, are served split like an English muffin with different filling options, including ham. Sandwiches are common for breakfast, almost always with ham in my experience. In the bakeries, there are sandwiches and pastries of different types, and always with ham and cheese, just ham, or just cheese. Yesterday I had lasagna for lunch, which had all of the fillings you would find in the US, and also deli slicked ham. For a few days I have been ham free, because I have been making my own breakfast and dinner in my posada. It has been really nice to eat simple food that I have made, after many days of going out and eating greasy food so often.
Lunches always come with soup, and the other day when I started eating my soup, I discovered that what I thought was chicken was very strange looking. It had strange texture and on one side of the chuncks sort of long cells. I figured it was octopus for some reason, but I later learned that it was mondongo, cow stomach. I didn´t eat very much of it. Perhaps I should look for something with ham next time and pass on the mystery menu items.