Food! Are we starving?

 

Far from it!  Sama and I cook every day, using mostly local food to make delicious yet simple meals.  You may hear us say we eat rice and beans a lot, but unlike plain boring rice and beans, we eat Gallo PInto, the Tico national dish.  Here is a picture:

A steaming, heaping plate of Platanos, Avocado, and Gallo Pinto, topped with a fried egg.  We mainly save the Platanos for desert because they are so sweet, but everything else we scoop enthusiastically into our eager maws.  A tortilla is an acceptable vessel of transport, but not necessary.  I like mine with lots of hot sauce, and Natilla to cool it down.  We haven’t completely figured out what Natilla is, but as far as we can guess it’s some sort of sweet cream, which you crave after several bites of spicy bliss.  A garnish of Cilantro is a bonus, but happens once in a blue moon.  Not to dote too much on the accompaniments, the real secret to Gallo Pinto is the Salsa Lizano:

A mysterious and revered condiment here in Costa Rica, Salsa Lizano is a secret blend of seasonings and spices that is only described with the epitaph Salsa de vegetales y condimentos naturales.  From the ingredients, I have gleaned that it contains sugar, molasses, mustard, celery, vinegar, and chiles.  It also has an aroma of cumin.  Despite the fact, we add cumin to our Gallo Pinto in abundance; you can never have too much! Even though most Ticos eat Gallo Pinto for breakfast, Sama and I make lunches and dinner out of it.  We eat Gallo Pinto at least four times a week.

Other food in our repertoire include Risotto (with regular long grain rice), Pasta with fresh tomato sauce, Grilled cheese, and Arepas.

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Mmmm Hot and gooey Arepas.  This traditional Colombian hockey puck is made from corn flour and filled with cheese, then fried or grilled.  We fill them with the local Mozzarella made by a family that learned how to make cheese from a Swiss tourist (all of the Swiss know how to make cheese, apparently). 

We also have been known to fry our own potato chips/fries, and once we tried to make yucca fries, but I boiled them too long before we fried them so they were a little mushy.  Other than that, we don’t eat much else, but if we eat out in town we’ll usually get chicken or fish (also served with rice and beans--but in my opinion, ours is better).

 

Enough about us.  on to our other housemates. 

Despereaux, our mouse companion likes to eat the following:

Understandably, the Platanos are a target.  But Despereaux doesn’t clean up after himself.

Our soap and Sama’s razor.  I think He has a dirty mouth and his mother washes his mouth with soap so he’ll stop cursing.

Socks. Towels. And the last straw, our Avocados.

Thus, we have resorted to catching Despereaux 1, 2, and 3 in box traps, then carrying them several kilometers away to our work site. 

 

Despereaux 1 was small, but numbers 2 and 3 were much larger.  The second one got it’s tail caught in the rap, and he skinned it pretty badly.  When we let him loose, he looked like a miniature opossum.  We’ve put our clothes in bins, and are now hiding the fruit, but we still have a mouse or two, or a dozen.  Despereaux 4, you’re in our sites.  DON’T GET COMFORTABLE.

We haven’t really seen what Leonardo the Lizard eats, but I assume he dines on flies and other moths, though he hasn’t really made a dent in hordes of insects that come into the house.  But it’s the effort that counts. Leonardo, you can stay.

More delicious updates to come!

Matthew