Thursday, January 7, 2010

Costa Rica: The Food

I know it's kind of ridiculous to do a whole post about food, but one of my favorite things to do on vacation is to try the local food. I couldn't really figure out what the typical food was there though.

This was my favorite meal of the whole trip. It was our last morning and we were driving back to San Jose. There was a little restaurant at the top of the mountain pass that looked out over the valley and on to the ocean. It was amazing! And the breakfast was so good. Some of the best homemade tortillas I've ever had. It was kind of funny when I asked what kind of juice this was and the guy tried to explain to me what it was. (Some sort of seed.)

This was the most local thing (I think). It's called ceviche. They had it everywhere! It's chunks of tomato, onion, avocado, cucumber, and fish--all soaked in lime juice and cilantro. It had a really good flavor except for the fish. I might try making it at home with chicken.

All the restaurants had no walls. Just a roof. It was really nice. This one was right on the beach.

We just thought this one was funny.

There was this family in our old ward from Costa Rica. I asked her what foods we needed to try and the one thing she insisted on was the traditional breakfast, which consists of eggs, rice & beans, tortillas and sour cream. It actually was pretty tasty.

I just think it's fun to try the local cuisine. And I thought it was fun to eat in the open air restaurants. We did have a little kitchen in our condo, so we really only ate out once a day and had breakfast and snacks and stuff in our condo.

A lot of the places had different variations of steak, chicken, and fish. But they were all really yummy. Not a whole lot of pasta or vegetable dishes.

A lot of places used these weird fruits as garnishes. It was like a cross between a lime and an orange. It looked like a lime on the outside, an orange on the inside, and tasted like a very tart lemon. There was also another one that looked like a cross between a lemon and an orange. Weird. We also tried some other fruits like mango, bananas, pineapple, and watermelon. It must have been watermelon season because they were everywhere! So good though.

At one place Matt ordered his steak medium rare, but the waiter misunderstood and brought it out rare. It was still cold in the middle! We had them take it back and cook it a little more.

All the food was really good. I especially liked how much they used avocados and tomatoes. Yum!

This was like a tostada type thing that was really good. It was our first meal in Costa Rica.

Anyway, sorry to bore you with a whole post about food, but it really was yummy! And I'm happy to report that despite all this yummy food, we both completed our Lean Santa challenge that our health insurancedoes, where if you don't gain more than 2 pounds from mid-November to the beginning of January, you get $25 cash plus a prize. Each. Yay for us!

5 comments:

Heather said...

Looks like an AMAZING trip....I'm so jealous, and sooo impressed that you could eat all of that prego, way to go! :)

Kristen Brady said...

You're making me hungry!

Danielle said...

Yum!! That seriously looks SO good. Aren't you feeling sick at all? I could not eat like that when I was pregnant. You are lucky. Now I am craving a tomato and advacado (sp?). You guys seriously do the funnest things.

Christy said...

I really haven't been sick at all. It's been nice. And especially on the trip, I didn't feel any different at all. Except one time I went too long without eating and just got really faint.

Leslie@leserleeslovesandhobbies said...

If I didn't have a friend bringing us dinner tonight, I would go cut open an avocado right now. I love avocados.