Two or three days later, my companion and I were invited one evening by our landlord to come and have a special "Dutch treat." As I walked by the kitchen I could see a pan full of sliced apples in a frying pan on the stove and my mouth began to water.

When my companion and I arrived back at the kitchen, the landlord was slicing a "blood sausage" and mixing it with the apples that had been frying. This blood sausage was made of beef blood and just enough fat or lard to harden the blood, and then shaped into a sausage. It was absolutely a terrible dish, and I did my best to pick out the apple slices and eat them. I smiled pleasantly and tried to show my enthusiasm of how good the dish was with my limited Dutch language skills.

I was never served this dish again, and I am happy to report that the pastries, cakes and cookies lived up to their pre-mission fame.

Michael Neilson
Netherlands Amsterdam Mission

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I served in the Central America Mission, which comprised the countries of Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. In three of those countries (Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica), it was typical for the missionaries to live with native families and pay for room and board — so we pretty much ate what the family ate.

In Honduras, in San Pedro Sula, during the winter months, we were served cornflakes with hot milk. Yes, the flakes got soggy pretty quick, but it actually tasted good and helped warm us up from our cold showers every morning (the house did not have hot water).

We were also served armadillo for dinner on one occasion. It was actually very good — like a tender, sweet pork.

Having grown up in San Diego, I had eaten Mexican food all of my life. So I was not quite prepared for the fact that corn tortillas in Honduras were typically a quarter-inch thick and unsalted. It took me a few months to get used to them.

Remember those small red-eared turtles you could buy in pet stores? In Nicaragua, the lady of the house brought home a full-grown, live one for dinner. I still have somewhere a picture of myself holding it while it was still alive. She tied a small rope around its neck to keep its head pulled out while she chopped it off. She then cut the turtle up and stewed the meat. It was dark and rather gamy.

The same woman once served what we thought was chicken and rice, a classic Central American dish and typically one of our favorites. However, with this one, the chicken seemed lean, tough and stringy. Then one of the elders found a pelvis bone buried in the rice. Chickens, of course, don't have pelvis bones, but iguanas do — and she acknowledged that's what we were eating.