Salbutes, Banana Splits & Mennonite Madness…Oh My!! – 8/27/06

What a fun Friday night we had!! But before I get into that, I need to get something off my chest. Most of you who know me well, know that bananas and I have not gotten along for a very long time. I don’t want to get into who did what and who hurt whom, because that will just bring up past bad feelings. But suffice it to say, I have never enjoyed or understood how others can find enjoyment in the taste or texture of bananas. However, I now live in a country where mangos have a very short season and are currently not available, (I know, isn’t that devastating?), pineapples cost $3.00 each, apples cost $1.85 each, and good ol’ bananas cost only 50 cents a pound. Since I have decided to eat better and try new things, I have given in and decided to put my life’s struggle with bananas aside in order to get the vitamins and nutrition I need at a cheaper price. It has been rough, and we still have a long road ahead of us. Although there is much bad history between bananas and I, but I believe in the end, we may learn to appreciate each other, even if we’re not best of friends.

Back to Friday night, it started with Nathan and I and our neighbors, Liz and Maria going to Three Flags for their Friday menu selection. On Fridays they offer several items for $1.00 and when peanut butter costs $11.00 US and 1 quart of milk costs $4.00 US, Fridays are a chance for us to fill our bellies with good food for a reasonable price. At the restaurant, we met another couple, Rosie and Cuatro, and Abe. Also, since everyone eats out on Fridays and all the tables are long, seating about 25, we set with a few other familiar faces and were visited by students during the course of our meal.

We ate salbutes and garnachas to our hearts content and washed it all down with good Belizian hot sauce and iced tea. Garnachas are very similar to a tostada. They are fried corn tortillas topped with refried beans, wonderfully seasoned chicken, tomatoes, cabbage and cheese. Salbutes are corn tortillas that are cooked in a way that makes them “puff” and the inside is filled with seasoned chicken, cabbage, and tomatoes. Those are my favorite!! I ordered 3 and topped them with lime and hot sauce….mmmMMmmm!

After the restaurant we all were off to Abe’s house to play card games and a game he had been promising to teach me….Mennonite Madness! And that is a very appropriate name for it! It is not a complicated game, most of the games we played that night were extremely simple, but all were very competitive and a lot of fun! In Mennonite Madness, everyone is given a blank sheet of paper, but there is only one pen.You pass a die around the table and if you roll a 1 or a 6, you grab the pen, and start writing numbers from 1 to 100 as fast as you can, while the die continues to be passed around and rolled. When someone else rolls a 1 or 6, they grab the pen out of your hand and begin to write their numbers. Sometimes as soon as you get the pen out of a person’s hand, another person rolls and 1 or 6, so you lose the pen before you had a chance to write down a single number. The first person to 100 wins! It is as simple as it sounds, but OH is it fun!! At one point, I rolled a 6 and then knocked the die off the table, so I would get more time to write. People were throwing themselves across the table, I fell out of my chair, and everyone got plenty of opportunities to laugh.

We took a break from the games to eat banana splits—quite a treat here because food is expensive, especially sweets! We had bananas, strawberries, chocolate sauce, almonds (which we hammered ourselves into small pieces to sprinkle), cool whip, and ice cream. I didn’t even put any ice cream in mine because it was sweet enough with all the other ingredients!

We met a few new people on Friday night, but mostly we had a lot of fun with familiar faces. I am always encouraged when I am reminded how much fun you can have, just being with people.