Happy National Pupusa Day!

I am not sure if I have written much about pupusas, but I do love to eat them!  Since today, November 14th is National Pupusa Day in El Salvador, I decided to search the word "pupusa" in my Google photos to see what I would find.  Although Google could not really tell the difference between my photos of pupusas and those of tortillas, I was sort of impressed that the search feature identified any pupusa photos at all.

If you are not familiar with pupusas, I am sorry.  They are delicious. The basic idea is to put soft, white cheese and other optional ingredients inside a tortilla and cook it on a griddle.  Common options are plain cheese, bean and cheese, cheese with shredded ayote (sort of like zucchinni) or chipilín, or cheese with beans and pork rinds. You can really put anything inside a pupusa.  Once, at a pupueria in Washington DC, I had a lobster and cheese pupusa. The masa or dough can be made from corn flour or rice flour, and depending on where you are in El Salvador, one might be more common than the other.  Corn is considered traditional.

A lovely pupusa photo, taken at a restaurant in Paseo del Carmen a few years ago.
I like pupusas with a little cheese leaking out of the sides, so the cheese nice and crispy.
Pupusas are served with a cabbage vinegar slaw called "curtido" and with a smooth tomato sauce.

I can make pupusas. In the US, my pupusas taste terrible.
I think the corn masa is different. I have had better
flavor when making them in El Salvador.  
That said, it is really economical to buy them.
Pupusas are eaten for breakfast or for supper.

When I typed "pupusa" into the search box, I did not really think about
pulling up photos with the word (as opposed to the actual food).
Here is a pic of our grandson from a few 
years back. We were marching in a protest against the treatment
of migrants at the US southern border, so he wore his pupusa solidarity t-shirt.

This is a picture of a teaching poster from the preschool that 
meets in our church in El Salvador.  Of course the PU word would be pupusa!
(Side note:  "meme" is the same word in Spanish as in English,
but in Spanish it is pronounced like may-may.)

When you eat pupusas at a pupuseria, you are usually given a plastic base plate
which is covered in wax paper. Pupusas are eaten with your fingers. You might
be able to tell that these pupusas are made from rice flour.

Can you find the pupusas in this photo. This was taken at a civic gathering
calling on the government to pass a law to protect El Salvador's water.
"We can live without pupusas, but we cannot live without water. We demand the water law now!"

A drive to Planes de Renderos for pupusas is a delegation tradition. 
The pupuseria optionsup in Planes are many, and the view is spectacular.

While my homemade pupusas in Milwaukee are less than delicious,
I can get good pupusas at a few places (including food trucks).
I think this was my father-in-law's first time eating pupusas with a
shout out to the El Salvador Restaurant in Milwaukee. 

Happy National Pupusa Day!