Grocery Shopping in San Juan del Sur

Many of our friends have asked us about the food here in Nicaragua.  I always tell them it is better and cheaper.  Today when we returned from grocery shopping I had the idea to write a quick blog article with some details to help you understand what I mean.

First, in terms of freshness: the food couldn’t be any more fresh.  Every day, farmers bring their wares to town so we actually consume the food within a day or two of coming out of the fields.  We buy fresh milk and cheese every few days and the seller is a farmer who gets up early, milks his cows, and brings three large milk cans to the market on a horse-drawn wagon.  We buy it for  30 Cordobas ($0.83) per liter and it is so fresh it is still warm.  Here you don’t pay an extra premium for organic. Although agriculture is a big part of the economy in Nicaragua, there are no big factory farms here. Whether you like it or not, everything is organic.  We think that's kind of cool.

The meat we bought today (see image of our butcher shop, above) cost us 1300 Cordobas ($36 US) and is a week of really good quality and good tasting meat.  In the US we would have paid $110-120 for the same but much lower quality meat.  We also bought several days of veggies for 230 Cordobas ($6).  We generally pick up a few vegetables every couple of days.  So what exactly did we get for our $42?

• Boneless, skinless chicken breasts (3.71 lbs.)

• 2 Ribeye Steaks (a 12 oz and a 13 oz.)

• 1 Tenderloin  (2.73 lbs.)

• 1 giant carrot

• 2 heads of lettuce

• 1 half head of cabbage

• 1 quarter head of cabbage

• 3 tomatoes

• 1 large avocado

A few things are worth pointing out.  The tenderloin is a less expensive way to have a thick and juicy steak.  It tastes very much like a NY strip and is similarly tight-grained with minimal marbling.  The local chicken tastes great.  It is nothing like the chicken in the US that tastes pretty much like nothing with a hint of chicken broth.  Also unlike US rapidly-grown chicken, chicken here is not full of growth hormones nor is it injected with a saline solution after butchering to make it weigh more and give it flavor.  It just has an incredible and natural chicken flavor.  

Check out the size of the carrot.  It is huge by US standards but normal here.  The avocado was one of the smaller ones. Most are much larger. The local lettuce is similar to endive or romaine but has a better flavor.  Cabbage salad is a local favorite and is similar to slaw but without the heavy coleslaw dressing.  Here it is typically eaten with a scoop of chilero (shredded onions, carrots, and several types of peppers soaked for hours to days in vinegar). Think fresh, mild hot sauce.

Besides the freshness of the food, there is an added bonus to our small and frequent shopping trips: exercise.  We live in the actual village of San Juan del Sur and not up on the hills in a gated expat community, so we walk to do most of our shopping.  Whether shopping for hardware, clothes, groceries, household items, or going to a restaurant, it is always a two-minute walk away.  The result is that we typically walk about five to six miles every day without even trying.  And because we are just a short walk to anything, we only drive if we are going somewhere out of town like Leon, Managua, or Rivas, saving us diesel and wear and tear on our truck.