Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
Embark on a budget-friendly culinary adventure in Guatemala with Pauline. Learn about her grocery shopping tips, savings, and the country’s rich traditions.
Life And Luxuries In Guatemala
I have lived in five different countries over the past ten years: France, Guatemala, Spain, the UK, and Morocco.
While I love to cook, changing countries has taught me that you can’t have the same meal plan wherever you live.
Luxury Foods Are Different In Each Country
Grocery shopping is a different experience in every country.
In France, cheese is cheap and delicious, while finding cheese other than orange cheddar is a challenge in Guatemala.
You would think that living in a cheaper country means that every daily item is more affordable.
It is true. But daily items mean what the people who live there eat.
In Guatemala, that means beans, rice, meat, and vegetables. Not cheese.
Cheese is a luxury not part of the lower and middle-class diet.
Even milk is a luxury, which is strange because there are so many cows, but I guess the whole refrigerated distribution is complicated.
Instead of having cheese for lunch and dinner like in France, I eat mozzarella or cheddar cheese once or twice a week, on pizza or omelets.
Once in a while, I pay a premium to enjoy a nice goat cheese from a gourmet delicatessen with a glass of wine.
Changing The Way I Eat And Drink
Wine is another thing that I have learned to replace.
In France, any supermarket can store wine in a dry and cool room.
At the main port, containers arrive with the wine at about 30 degrees Celsius all year. Customs can take days to clear while the wine gets a heat shock.
Then, it is brought to my little town on a bumpy road, and you take a serious bet when you buy a bottle there.
Once again, I could go to the wine shops of Guatemala City and pay the price of an excellent Bordeaux for an average, at best, bottle of wine or switch to beer like I did, which is just fine.
Food Products Used In Guatemala
Usually a piece of meat or a fresh fish from the lake, a side of rice and a few vegetables.
We don’t take three courses like the French or even desert courses.
Simple, healthy, and cheap. Meat is $3/lb, and we eat lunch and dinner with a pound since I don’t eat much meat.
Rice is the base of any meal; in France, it was potatoes.
Not that potatoes are expensive, usually they cost $0.40/lb, but my boyfriend says I have turned him into a ”potatovore” so I try to balance and learn how to cook more rice.
Rice is perfect to fry with any leftover vegetables, so often, the odd carrot or zucchini ends up diced in the rice.
Weekly Meal Planning In Guatemala
Another thing that I have had to get used to is grocery shopping in Guatemala once a week or once a fortnight.
The nearest supermarket is 20 miles away, and with our not-so-efficient car, it costs $20 round trip.
So, I plan my meals accordingly and invest in a deep freezer toavoid food waste.
I buy as many vegetables as possible, dice, and freeze the ones that will be cooked anyway and could go bad quickly.
- Celery
- Zucchini
- Cauliflower
I also freeze the meat, bacon, and cheese (as we only eat that cheese cooked on pizzas or crepes, it doesn’t matter.
On the first days after a grocery shop, we have a side of salad, as after three days, the lettuce starts looking sad in the fridge.
For the rest of the week, we eat the vegetables that last longer, like onions, tomatoes, and avocados.
Delicious ripe avocados are a delight here, and I make mean guacamole!
Typical Day Of Eating In Guatemala
We have eggs from our hens and beans or crepes, the typical Guatemalan breakfast.
Our crepes are like breakfast burritos; you can put anything inside, such as eggs, cheese, ham, tomatoes, jalapeño chilis, basil, and onion filling, and they are delicious.
If I want bacon on my eggs or crepes, I cut some frozen bacon and cook it in a few minutes.
The bacon packs are too big and would go rotten if I had them in the fridge, so I freeze them.
Processed food: I regularly buy a can of pureed beans that we have with breakfast.
I could cook the black beans for three hours, blend them, cook them more with onions and garlic, and then fry them a little, but that four-hour process is too long.
Unlike my crepes, I never get them to taste right—no disappointment with the can.
Dinner is unimportant here; many people have hot coffee and biscuits.
Coffee is the one thing you would imagine dying for here, and it is super cheap, but apparently, the best coffee is exported.
In that regard, we also buy quite an expensive coffee for my boyfriend as I don’t drink coffee.
We don’t systematically have dinner.
Sometimes, we snack on chips or have something sweet, like my homemade frozen yogurt.
I have cultures that turn milk into yogurt and then freeze it with a bit of sugar and some pieces of fruit.
Another option is to blend the frozen yogurt with fruit such as bananas and apples.
Our diet is quite basic, and I do almost everything from scratch.
We never buy frozen mea;s, I cook and free themze.
As I mentioned, a few products are expensive, although we eat pretty cheaply most days.
I am trying to monitor grocery spending and have joined the grocery game challenge with a goal of $200 monthly for two.
For January and February, I only have $100 to spend on groceries because we did a big shop for Christmas, and I am fully stocked on expensive items.
If you want to see more about grocery prices in Guatemala and how badly I miss coupons, you can check my posts in Mr. CBB’s grocery game challenge.
Water In Guatemala
I forgot to say that we also buy drinking water in Guatemala.
We pump our water from the lake to shower and do dishes, and it is an obvious lake, but we’d rather not risk it.
So, a truck delivers a 5-gallon tank of potable water to our door every week for $2.
Make The Best Food With What You Have
Apart from showing you how the food and cooking in Guatemala goes, my point with this post is to suggest that you try doing your best with what you have.
- If you live in the country, chances are you will find farmers selling corn by the side of the road at a bargain during harvest season. Make all kinds of recipes, and you won’t feel like you always eat the same thing.
- If the supermarket offers a particular item, stock up, not so much that you will throw food, just enough to prepare a few cheap meals.
- If you harvest berries in the woods, wash them and freeze them to enjoy them all year.
- If you have a garden, learn how to can or preserve your surplus crop.
- If you find a deal on beef meat, freeze part of it, and don’t buy chicken or pork that week.
- If you go to the market at the end of the day, forget your shopping list and articulate your meals around the reduced products.
Life Is About Balance
Having an expensive meal occasionally is perfectly fine, but if you want to control your grocery spending, your best bet is to make do with what is cheap and available.
Thank you for reading,
Pauline.
Contribution fromPauline Paquin, a French girl who blogs atReach Financial Independence. Born and raised in Paris, Pauline writes about how she has travelled the world for ten years while trying to build wealth and achieve financial independence.
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