Pinoleo

Life in Nicaragua can have you cooking all day even just for a traditional Nicaraguan drink. In this case, pinoleo (pin-oh-lee-oh) is a mix of roasted corn, cacao beans, soy beans, and jicaro seeds which need to be roasted on an open fire. Jasmina and I went to get some wood and set a fire to start roasting each of these ingredients. After this was done, which took a good couple of hours, we had to wait for it to cool and then go to the molino (a place where they grind stuff) the next day. It's a very hot process by the way! Then, ta-da, you mix everything together, a dash of sugar, and water and you have pinoleo...a traditional nicaraguan drink.



Drying the corn.


top: soy
bottom left: cocoa beans
bottom right: jicaro seeds


Jasmina and Johan getting the corn to the fire.


Roasting corn.