Port Potager

One thing we've loved about being in Costa Rica is all the tropical produce that we get to eat. We've enjoyed incredibly ripe, sweet watermelon and mangoes, and have had no trouble picking out a ripe avocado — they're all ripe. The pineapple is unbelievable — when it doesn't have to travel 3,000 miles, it's juicy and aromatic in a way that we just don't get in Massachsuetts. But our favorite fruit of all? The mamón chino : This is a tropical tree fruit with no real English translation. It's like a small, delicious treat from another planet. It's red spiny-ness is only the beginning. Once you dig in a thumbnail and peel back the skin, you see this: The picture doesn't quite do it justice, but it's like a smooth, alien eyeball. When you bite into one, the texture is like that of a peeled grape, but the fruit is juicier and sweeter, with no acidity. There's also an almond-like pit inside: Your job is to ...

Today is the last installment of the summer sequel miniseries. These posts have all been a "Part 2" in budget areas that, upon further consideration, could be cut back even more than I did the first the around. I saved the very easiest do-over cut for last: Limit school cafeteria purchases to just three per week. Last winter we cut off all the kids' cookie and fancy drink purchases, as well as one cafeteria lunch per week . That was a bit of an adjustment, and there were many weeks when they "forgot" and bought something off-limits. (Remember, I can easily check their purchases at myschoolbucks.com .) True to my word, I docked their allowances to cover these extra purchases, and within a few months they were mostly on board with using their lunch boxes more often (although they still think that sometimes 50 cents is reasonable for a sweet treat, and I can't say that I blame them). Last year school lunches cost $2.75 a piece, but starting in Septem...

After learning how coffee grows and how it is processed , the final leg of our tour of Hacienda Real  revealed how the coffee is roasted and readied to drink. Because Hacienda Real ships only unroasted beans to their buyers, their roasting operation is quite small. They only roast for local buyers like area hotels and restaurants — and to package and sell in their factory store. The roaster is a mid-century antique from Germany: This is probably the coolest-looking machine anywhere, ever. Alas, we did not get to see it in action, but to use it, workers climb the steps to dump the beans into the copper hopper. From there the beans pass through chute into the black drum, where they are tumbled around while heated, not unlike popcorn. When roasted to the desired color, the beans are then released to the pan where that silver bar spins the beans around to cool them. When that is finished, they fall down the short, silver chute into a bag. There are no computers on th...

After touring the fields and gardens of the coffee plantation at Hacienda Real, we walked over to the on-site factory where they process the beans.  Workers use baskets to hold the red, ripe coffee berries as they pick them. When they have a full basket, they head back to the factory and pour their baskets into the square metal box for measuring (an exact number of kilos). When it's full, the box of coffee berries is then dumped into the hopper: The berries pass through the hopper into a large holding bin, where they are rinsed with clean water piped in from the river. The rinsing is mostly for cooling the berries off from their time in the warm sun: From the hopper, the berries pass through this giant food mill to remove the first two skins and layers of pulp. If you look at the orange square in the middle, you can see the spiral-shaped auger (which you will recognize if you use a food mill for any tomato processing or applesauce making ). The pulp and skins...

While in Costa Rica, we took an utterly fascinating tour of an organic coffee farm called Hacienda Real.  Our Tico guide (and expert coffee taster) Tyrone picked us up in Turrialba and drove us over some muddy, hueco -ridden and largely unpaved backroads to his farm. On the way we shared (in Spanish!) our love of 80s tunes and movies (especially Footloose ), but things got even more interesting once he started talking about farming. Before stepping out into the coffee fields, we passed through a really beautiful tropical garden: I'm not certain what any of these plants are, though I'm sure Tyrone could have told me. But once he started talking coffee beans, it was hard to think about anything else.  This is an Arabica coffee plant: There are actually several plants here. The coffee plant in in the center, with the dark green, oblong leaves branching out of a single woody stem. To the left is verbena, which smells lemony like it does at home, but h...

After sampling several versions of local rice and bean dishes during our beach weekend here in Costa Rica, we went shopping for ingredients to do our own cooking when we got back to Turrialba, the town where we are living and going to school. Between our own palates and the information I got from my Spanish teacher Heyni, we were ready to make our own version of a traditional gallo pinto .  Gallo pinto means "spotted rooster," but really it's the name of typical mix of beans and rice and spices. This is usually served with eggs for breakfast, but we decided to have it with some chicken for dinner. Here are our ingredients: Clockwise from the top, first we have salsa de vegetales  (also, for reasons unknown, called  salsa inglesa ),   which is a local condiment used mostly on bean and rice dishes. It's a non-spicy, savory mix of onion, carrot, cucumber, cauliflower, garlic, pepper, and cumin. We grabbed the cheap version, but the standard is appare...

Remember when MassSave gave us a bunch of free stuff , including an aerator for our bathroom faucet? Well, it turns out that you can get even more restrictive faucet aerators to Reduce water flow in the bathroom sinks to save resources (and cash). This is an especially good one if you have kids, because they tend to let the water run more than is strictly necessary for cleanliness (at least mine do). A faucet aerator restricts the flow of water out of the faucet, but mixes in air so it doesn't feel like less water on your skin. MassSave gave us a 1.5 gallon per minute aerator, but I discovered in my research that you can get a 0.5 gpm aerator for under $5 at the Home Depot . We had to wait a bit because it was a special order, but once we got it, it was a fast switcheroo to replace the old ones. The downstairs bath has a chrome finish, and that was just as easy as unscrewing the old aerator and screwing the new one on, since it's easy to find a matching chrome aerato...