Pancake Travels

We once again find ourselves traveling to El Salvador, this time in our kitchen.  We had a loooooong layover in El Salvador on our recent trip to Ecuador.  During our layover, we had the opportunity to eat Salvadoran pupusas, which is their version of a pancake.  They were quite tasty. To make your own Salvadoran pupusas, here is what you'll need: 2 cups masa harina 1 1/2 cups of water salt to taste 1/2 cup of shredded cheese that melts (we used jack) 1 can of black or pinto refried beans We didn't have refried black or pinto beans in the house, all we had were cans of whole black and pinto beans.  So I made my semi-homemade refried beans.  If you find yourself in the same situation, don't go buy refried beans, just make them.  To do this, measure 1 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan.  Add 1 clove of minced garlic and fry on medium heat until the garlic is golden brown. Apparently Sam was bored by my refried bean making, so he went outside wi...

This Sunday brings us to Burkina Faso, and I must say that I'm quite ecstatic to be writing a post about it on the same day that we actually ate the pancakes.  Woohoo!  I guess that's what happens when you have the following week off of work and none of your errands seem all that pressing. For those of you familiar with the old saying about beans, you might have already guessed from the title of this post that this week's pancakes involves beans, black eyed peas to be more specific.  Our visit to Burkina Faso takes us back to the African continent this week.  It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the region that Burkina Fasoans eat a bean type of pancake just as those residing in Benin.  Burkina Faso and Benin border each other for a small portion of each's border.  Of course I had no clue about this until I started my research for this week's pancake, that's half of the fun of this project, discovering new and interesting facts about the wo...