So, what is this I'm eating?

So, one third of my job description is to share aspects of foreign culture with Americans. Obviously this whole blog does that, but I’m going straight to the point with this one. There is a very short list of the things that every single one of the 6.78 billion human beings in the world does every day. I’d put it at sleep, breathe, eat, and excrete. Hunger and famine are very serious issues that are even more obviously not adequately addressed, but I think almost all people are getting at least some food every day. Hunger is not a problem in Puerto Viejo, and partially because it doesn’t take much to find something to eat. Being in the tropics, and in a fairly fertile plain, there’s plenty growing on the tree to just reach up and grab. Which, brings me to the subject of this post-some new and interesting foods I have been exposed to here in Costa Rica.



Day in day out Costa Ricans don’t get too exotic. Rice, beans, boiled chicken, pork chops, maybe some salad and fried plantains or yucca. I mean, heck, sandwiches are pretty common here. And for breakfast, they just stir the beans into the rice and add some sauce and then throw a fried egg on the side. But, when it comes to fruits-that’s when things get a little more exciting. Below are a few of the foods that were in the kitchen the other day when I was inspired to break out the camera.



Our first item is passion fruit. No, I'm not a total ignoramus, I had heard of passion fruit before. But, as far as I know, I had never eaten it. I was just pleasantly sitting, eating my dinner, when I turned around and asked my host mom what the fruit was on the counter; I was told it was a granadilla (or little granada (pomegranate)) which actually makes lots of sense. These passion fruits were super sour, so I loaded up on the salt, and enjoyed the greenish-brownish gooey inside.

Below you see an avocado leaning against the slow cooker (used exclusively for beans). Or maybe you didn't instantly recognize this avocado, because of its green skin. Before coming to Costa Rica, I had only seen (like most Americans) the dark skinned, smaller Hass avocado. (Side note: the Hass avocado tree was the first tree to ever receive a patent in the U.S.) Avocados grow like it's their job here, which is awesome, because they're awesome, and some of the Hass dark, rough skinned ones grow here, but I also see a lot of the larger, softer, lighter skinned ones, as featured below.

Yeah, so me holding a mango isn't really that exotic. Well, whatever, you're stuck reading this post this far, so you may as well keep on trucking. Growing up in Iowa, mangoes weren't exactly something I saw every day. I ate a lot of them in China (the world's number two mango producer-India's got number one by a landslide) but they were always considerably smaller, like half this size, and very yellow. But here, where they grow so prolifically they cover the ground like leaves in some areas, many of the mangoes are purple, red, green, orange, and yellow. And they are considerably larger than the ones I have seen anywhere else.

Below you see some bananas on steroids, right? Well, from what I've gathered, that's about right. I felt better when my host mom stated that she had never seen these corpulent bananas before, considering she grew up in the region, and well, has been cooking and eating Costa Rican food for a few more years than I. There is a popular dish here called patacones, which are green plantains cut a certain way and fried. It really sounded like my host was calling these things platacones, but he's a big time mumbler and non-enunciater, so maybe he was saying patacones, and this type of plantain is just named for the dish it's used for, or maybe they're called platacones. Either way, they need to get on a diet.

This next one is the most mysterious. I've had it about three or four times, and it's delicious. And it's not tamarind. Although it looks very similar to tamarind, and grows on a tree just like tamarind does, it's not. Inside of the pod, which grows on a tree that seems fairly common here, are a line of seeds-approximately six to ten. The seeds are hard and jet black-but are surrounding by a very soft, stringy, white flesh, which is sweet, smooth, and a pleasure to chew off the seed-which is then spit out. If anybody's got any clues, my little bit of googling wasn't able to solve the problem. Oh, yeah, I've been told it's called guaba, what we call guava is guayaba in Spanish (in Costa Rican Spanish v and b are indistinguishable), but I've been unable to google anything that confirms this. I also, could've heard my host sister wrong (very large possibility).

Update!!! Jonathan, an English teacher at the night school who I really enjoy working with, didn't know what guaba was in English when I asked him. But when I then said that no one seems to know, he was all about solving the problem (my kind of guy) and with about 20 minutes of work on his smart phone he had found out that the plant above is Inga feuilleei, or the ice-cream bean. So, there it is kids.