A Taste of Paradise

For me, part of traveling is pleasing my taste buds.  Different food that I've eaten when I've been someplace new stays with me for far longer than many other experiences while I'm away.  Many years later, I still remember the spinach, cheese and corn pies from Shakespeare Pies in Manly, Australia, mudslides in Grand Cayman, crab cakes in Maryland, pupusas in El Salvador, and more recently, pao de queijo in Brazil and arepas in Colombia.  What food memories does Honduras, and specifically Roatan, offer?  All over Honduras, you can get baleadas.  Tasty and filling, it's just a flour tortilla folded in half, and inside is refried beans, a salty cheese and mantequilla (sour cream).  You can also get them with scrambled eggs, or with chicken or beef.  Baleadas are sold on just about every street.  Another common one is pastelitos, which are half-moons of fried dough stuffed with a mixture of beef and rice, or sometimes fish and rice or chicken and rice.  
One of my favourite dishes on Roatan is tapado.  It's a delicious seafood stew made with a coconut milk broth, lots of root vegetables like yucca, malanga and potato, as well as flour dumplings, and is the perfect combination of savoury, a bit of spice and a little sweet.  Unfortunately, it's not a dish that any restaurants serve- it's usually cooked outside on a huge pot and shared with family and friends.  Fortunately, my neighbour Sherwin makes a great tapado, so we've had him prepare one a few times for a meal with everyone from the hostel, so that everyone could try this great dish.