Semana Santa Pan y Miel

During Semana Santa it is customary to make a special bread and a special sauce that you give to neighbors, family, and friends. We were fortunate to assist in the process with Andy, Tomasa, and family starting with visiting the bakery...
Since most people don´t have a huge oven they take their ingredients, with the proportions they prefer and deliver it to a baker where they put it all together. Tomasa took something like 25lbs of flour, 50 plus farm fresh eggs, 7lbs of sugar, and I don´t know how much shortening. The guys at the bakery mix all the ingredients and make probably 100 or so loaves of bread of different shapes and styles then cook them on wood planks in a wood burning oven. Supposedly they have it ready at a particular time for you to pick it up, but we have learned that ¨Guatemala Time¨ often works differently. The bread was meant to be ready at 3:10 but when we arrived at 3:45 it wasn´t finished, so we killed 45 minutes going to the store. When we returned it was just about to come out of the oven. About 20 more minutes later they were ready but had to cool on metal trays for a while before we transported them. It´s difficult to explain, but what seems like a simple procedure of dropping off and picking up can turn into quite an adventure and eat up a whole day.
The next days we helped Tomasa by peeling fruit for the miel. We peeled a couple baskets green mangos, peaches, green figs, and coyoles (not sure in English?). The coyoles are pertty fun because you can´t use a knife or a peeler so we threw them really hard on the ground to make some cracks and then hand peel the shell. It was a bit crazy with coyoles bouncing and flying all over the kitchen. The mangos and figs sat in a bucket with water and lime (the mineral) for a day before going into a pot to brew. In a pot goes all the fruits, plantains, garbonzo beans, and some brown sugar type sweetener. This all cooks down for hours until it is really dark and syrupy then it is eaten with the bread and all tastes very sweet and fruity.