A WARNING TO THOSE I LOVE: Never eat a Guatemalan ¨empanada de leche¨ or you will never recover!

Deadly Guatemalan Empanadas de Leche

I warn you.  I am not kidding.  All of my adult life (and by this time I am more than adult and gaining on just plain old codger) I have avoided eating most all food with dairy products/other sold off the street carts in Latin America. 

It's not that the food isn't fresh and appealing when offered on the street, and it mostly is, it's just that I am kind of a fussbudgety (is that how you spell it?) when it comes to food purchased, prepared and served.  I like my meals served in a sparkly clean restaurant, humble or elegant. Any food is fine and just dandy with me as long as I feel assured I will survive the meal (or not die during the night after I eat it).  I also am really/really careful about dairy products since I was almost assassinated by a cream puff as a young lad in Washington State growing up to become the ¨Norteamericano¨that I now am.  Enough about me.  

I have met the enemy and it has taken me over.  I am a lost soul. It's name:  Empanada de Leche (still hot and filled with a creamy sweet/thick milk in a delicateish pie crust and sprinkled with raw sugar).  Surely las empanadas will kill me because, just after two Sundays (the day of the really good ones prepared and sold to families wandering the plazas and calles) I am fully hooked.  

Have mercy on me, I'm a gonner.  How could this be happening to me after I have been so very, very good?  So charming, such a nice guy with good manners (mostly). No doubt some kind of brujaria has come down and possessed me...some unknown evil sugar goddess has grabbed me and insists that I pay full attention to her cookeriaja.  

Come see me. We will investigate this grave matter and besides that, I'll share (maybe). 

 Leonardo Ricardo on a chilly Sunday night at the foot of the Fuego volcano.