Cookin’ in Costa Rica

The joke in my house is that if the smoke alarm goes off, Mom is cooking. HAHAHA. Oh, wow, that’s funny. Almost as funny as "Mom, which direction are we heading?" Which I always answer wrong the first three times. So? So imagine our surprise when I...

Farmer’s Market Haul

Jal went to the Farmer’s Market today. He got all this for 7500 colones ($15). Melons are out of season and so were expensive today at 1000 colones ($2) a pop. Including 300 colones to rent the cart, 100 colones for each kid that helped haul the goods, 500...

“Whaddya Expect for 900 Bucks?”

When you blog, you "meet" people all over the world who also blog. Bloggers, as I’m sure you have realized by now, are fascinating people. Ok, maybe that’s a stretch. Maybe we are just verbose. Verbose and usually cheerful. I have a blogger...

El Rambutan

A few years ago, after dining at one of our favorite Key West restaurants, Ambrosia, we were presented with an odd looking little fruit. We were told it was a lychee, "a delicacy, delicious – please try"! We did and sure enough it was. They are also...

Speckled Cock

Believe it or not, I’m talking about breakfast here.Gallo pinto (GA-jo PEEN-to) is the typical dish of Costa Rica: black beans and white rice cooked separately, then mixed and cooked with spices. Good gallo pinto is freshly made – not leftovers as many...

Berni’s

Berni’s (BEAR-nees) is our favorite local lunch spot. It’s right in Santa Barbara, the fish is fresh and they spice it up real nice, fry it, add a little salad, maybe some papas fritas (french fries, although we have a new resolve to give up papas fritas),...