Dear Friends,

Prairie is writing an update about food and so am I. We like to think that the two messages will complement each other.

I have not been completely open with you about one thing--my weight. Why not? you wonder. Because my mother gets these updates and she worries. But I've been thinking things over and feeling guilty about keeping secrets. I have, therefore, decided that at 91, she is a grown-up and can "take it."

It is a struggle to keep my weight up. Poor people don't eat rich food. Rich food is costly. We eat a pretty good diet. We have a good friend who is a dietician who gives us lots of free consults by email. We are just coming off a month of a well-balanced diet.

The problem is calories. Beans are usually fixed without oil. Corn tortillas are prepared without oil. Rice is usually fixed with a little oil (except by Prairie), but rice has jumped in price and we don't eat it often. It is quite possible to eat boiled green bananas, beans and corn tortillas and have no fat in the diet for a few days.

We live a very high-calorie life. We are very active. Some days, I think, are 3,000-calorie days. I can't eat that much in a day. Overfilling my stomach is miserable.

So, the day after a very active day; e.g., Mondays on which we walk 2-6 miles, much in hills, and half with backpacks of groceries, I am in calorie deficit. We do more sedentary work on Tuesdays and cook higher calorie foods that day.

I have been malnourished by my standards only once. That was when Prairie was traveling to the states and I got sick. I lost a lot of weight, but put it right back on again.

Poor people are skinny in Honduras. Our sometimes neighbors called the nursing mother in their group, "la flaquita." Skinny, but it really means, very skinny.

When we realized that I had lost about 4 pounds without intending to, we had to relook our whole food and cooking situation. Bad management. So, we hope to do better. The idea is that monastics think about God, not food. Well, they shouldn't waste away while doing that.

Fortunately, we now have two neighbor families giving us whole milk. I have regained more than a pound in two weeks. Last week, we received 7 litres (just over 7 quarts) of whole milk. And it is cheap. So, as long as these neighbors last and the cows don't go dry, we expect to be consuming a lot of milk!

We bought 50 pounds of corn (in kernels) in the middle of July. It was eaten in a month and a half. So, we began buying corn on Mondays in town.

A few weeks ago, we bought 8 pounds of corn, expecting it to be our major staple for the week, as well as feeding the dog. We got home to find that it had a lot of fungus and bugs, mostly fungus. We decided that it was not suitable for human food. We toasted it up to make the dog mush. But, by Friday, we could see that we did not have enough staples for the week. We went to the garden and picked the dwarf platanos that we had been watching grow and were still uncertain if they were ready. We picked them because we needed them; they were ready! We could finish up our week eating boiled and fried platanos to fill our our meals. We were very grateful.

The corn harvest is late this year, because the rains to signal planting were late. When the corn is harvested, we will be able to buy a 100-pound sack from a neighbor.

My grandmother used to say that she didn't want to be a skinny old lady. Well, that was her wish and I remember her words. It feels like I am now a skinny old lady. After all, in Honduras, 60 is "the third age" and I turn 61 next week. As we were sorting through our consternation about the weight thing, it was said, "maybe we are called to be skinny." Yes, maybe we are--that is, skinnier than we already are, which, by Honduran standards, is aleady too thin to look healthy.

So, we are learning more about what it means to choose poverty. It is a slow process.

Dios les bendiga,

beth