The Food In Costa Rica Is Better Than Airport Food

Once again, I apologize. I’ve not been very good about posting. Like always, my excuse is finals week, which is now over. NOW, I’m in Costa Rica studying abroad for 7 weeks. I will be taking a few classes here and living with a host family and my hope is that I’ll be able to continue posting and keeping everyone updated on the amazing food that I will no doubt be eating.

For now, I’ll let you know what I’ve eaten on my travel day. Disclaimer: my camera needed batteries so I don’t have pictures of what I ate. 

The first thing I ate was a banana on the way from my dad’s house in New Hampshire to Logan International Airport at 3:30 a.m. I wasn’t exactly hungry, but I knew I needed to eat something. 

I didn’t eat again until after I arrived in Orlando (around 9 or 9:30) where I picked up a fruit bowl consisting of cantaloupe, honey dew melon, pineapple, and grape. The pineapple was the best part. The melons were not very juicy.

What was really exciting though was that I found Hail Merry macaroons in original and chocolate as well as Justin’s peanut butter cups. Of course, I had to get both. Since I’ve tried the original macaroons, I decided to go for the chocolate. To die for.  They melted in my mouth and the ingredients list was super simple: shredded, coconut, cocoa powder, coconut oil, maple syrup, vanilla bean, and sea salt. I was pretty content after that.

On the airplane I ate a Rise raspberry-pomegranate energy bar that I picked up at Whole Foods on Saturday, as well as complimentary Terra Chips blue potato chips. 

Dinner was a huge improvement in terms of quantity and quality. We went to a restaurant on a mountain top, overlooking four counties at night. It was dark except all the the lights from the cities. 

I had rice and beans with Salsa Lizano, THE Costa Rican condiment that is amazing. I don't even know how to explain it. It's not spicy, but has so much flavor. I also ate a potato dish, salad, bread, and sweet plantains. To drink I had bottled water and a lemonade. It was heavenly, as Costa Rican food usually is, but even more so after a long day and not eating for over 6 hours.

Breakfast was equally delicious and looked a lot like dinner. Gallo pinto (rice and beans done a little differently than the night before), potatoes, sweet fried plantains, fresh pineapple, watermelon, and papaya. The fruit was incredible, juicy and flavorful and an all-around amazing way to start the morning. If this is how I will be eating all the time, or even most of it, I could get used to it. 

Smoothie Inspiration from YouTube

I am a big fan of YouTube videos, especially the ones relating to vegan food and lifestyle. It's always exciting when there is a new video from The Sweetest Vegan or The Vegan Zombie (just to name a few). Though I'm not a raw foodie at all, I recently came across the YouTube channel Easy To Be Raw and have become semi-addicted to the content. Since watching it I've been having some major fruit cravings. Good thing the warmer weather is coming, which means I have a better selection of fruit to pick from.

Anyways, one of the videos that I've watched two or three times already is this one, The Best Juice in the Universe! (No Juicer Needed). This is where I got inspiration for my latest smoothie. The juice Megan Elizabeth makes in this video is cherry-strawbery-fuji apple juice. Ummm, yes please!

While I do have a juicer, as you may know, I couldn't find cherries. No fresh cherries, no frozen either. So we stuck with the smoothie. And truth be told, cleaning a blender is much easier than cleaning a juicer....that's probably the real reason. Anyways, instead of whole cherries, we bought cherry juice.

Also, this is the first time, to my recollection, that I used apples in a smoothie. I've always felt that apples are not for smoothies. Clearly, I was mistaken. 

This smoothie has two gala or fuji apples, a cup of frozen or fresh strawberries, a cup of black cherry juice and two tablespoons of hemp seeds. Sometimes it also has a handful of spinach because I have to.

This smoothie is definitely on the thicker side and makes about 24 oz of sweet smoothie goodness. Maybe over the summer I will make this as juice, the way it was originally intended. But for now I'm in love with this smoothie.

Baking Frustrations and Delights

I apologize for being away for so long. I’ve been busy finishing homework and papers as my spring semester winds down. There is only this week left plus next week which is reserved for finals. In addition to that, I’m moving out of my apartment next week and will be studying abroad in Costa Rica for almost two months.

But never mind that. Today, I want to share with you a delicious cupcake that I made a couple time. I know it’s not healthy, but it was just so delicious. 

I followed Chef Chloe Coscarelli’s Close-tess Cupcake. It’s basically a hostess cupcake, but way better because it’s homemade and vegan. 

I made a bit of a mess

The cupcake has three components to it: chocolate cake, cream filling, and ganache. The results were perfect for everything in terms of quality and flavor, however, this assembly threw my skills through a loop and the first time around I got very frustrated. 

Sticky, greasy, delicious, and difficult to pipe with my low quality piping bags

I tried piping the cream into the cakes and some of them were perfect and filled exactly as you’d want them. Others, not so much. Some of them didn’t have any cream in them. Some had just a little bit. It was very hit or miss. 

The second time around, I just plopped a dollop of the cream on top and drizzled (dumped?) ganache over the top. Now that was fantastic. 

I think the problem was that my skills are simply not up to par (yet). Or the piping bag we have isn't great quality. 

Regardless, the problems I experienced had absolutely nothing to do with the recipe, which was amazing.  I will definitely be making them again. And you should too.

When Thai Takeout and Pizza Just Aren't Cutting It

I’m pretty sure everyone in my life knows I love to eat. I’m particularly known to enjoy Thai food, pineapple curry or anything with peanuts. When Ben and I order pizza, we like a deep dish pizza loaded with veggies, hold the cheese, obviously. Lately, though, both pizza and Thai food seem really boring. I just haven’t been craving either of them like I normally do. A few days I ago, Ben and I were on our computers and I sent him a message through Skype. All it said was, “Indian takeout this weekend.” He looked up at me, nodded and said, “Yes.” 

From Left: Box of basmati rice, samosas, channa masala and
mutter mushroom, soy saucey dip, coriander chutney(?),
and red chutney

The only reason we don't go to Taste of India more often is that they don't deliver and they are a little bit of a hike from where we live. Other than that, Taste of India is a great restaurant. Their staff is really nice. The first time we went, when asking if the naan had to have the butter, the sweet woman said, "Not if you don't want butter." I melted a little bit.

 

Anyways, channa masala is one of the recipes we’ve made many times. We aren’t always recipe repeaters so when we do make something again, you know we like it. Despite making it on our own, there is something super special about ordering it from a restaurant. 

In addition to channa masala, we also ordered mutter mushroom and two orders of samosas. It was the first time Ben had mutter mushroom, the first time either of us had had samosas, and the first time he’d heard of a samosa. Nevertheless, we absolutely devoured our food.

Indian food is not the prettiest in the world, but it's some of the tastiest.

The samosas were gone first…I mean, obviously. They are little fried pockets of potatoes, spices, and peas. We dipped them in the green dipping sauce (coriander chutney). The chutney was lightly sweet and had an amazing, not really spicy, bold flavor. The second dipping sauce was more likely a soy saucy barbeque sauce (Ben’s description). That’s all gone now too. A red chutney was also packed in our takeout bag. That was mostly spicy. While have no problem with spicy, we both thought the other two dips packed a bigger flavor punch. 

Then we moved on to the channa masala and the mutter mushroom. Both had those typical Indian spices like cinnamon and cardamom. The mutter mushroom was creamy, decadent, and had peas in it. The channa had potatoes. Need I say more?

All of this was served with a big container of spiced basmati rice. Basmati rice is by far my favorite rice of all time…I just eat brown, usually, because it’s cheaper and healthier, but it is just not as good as basmati. Period. 

Have any of you ever enjoyed Indian food? If you haven't, you're really missing out because Indian food is full of flavor and love. Yes, I said it, love. 

Trying to Eat Healthy

Some days (or weeks) I don't eat as well as I should. Sometimes I start the day off with something super healthy and other days I immediately go to junk food. With finals coming up in a few weeks, I've got plenty of stuff to keep me good and stressed. So, I'm making an effort to eat healthier.

Like many vegans (or health-interested people), I enjoy meandering around my natural food store, browsing and dreaming about products that I can't justify purchasing. One of these products is an acai berry frozen puree packet. The bag comes with four packets and it hovers around 6 dollars (at least where I live) and I've never felt that it was really worth it when I can get a bag of mixed frozen berries for half the price.

But, I finally splurged and I'm so glad I did. They are delicious, not delicious enough to buy them every single week, but certainly wonderful enough to add into my smoothie rotation every now and then. They are labeled unsweetened, but with four or five strawberries and a banana, my smoothie was definitely sweet enough. In addition to acai, strawberry, and banana, I also added my usual flax seed, spinach, avocado, and coconut water. 

Not much to look at, but it sure was tasty!

Last night, we also enjoyed a Chunky Guacamole sandwich from one of the Moosewood cookbooks. We call them "Avocado Salad Sandwiches." They have avocado, cucumber, tomato, scallion, garlic, lime juice, cilantro (which we happily omitted...yes, I am in the no-cilantro-ever camp), and a pinch of salt in between two pieces of toasted rye bread. 

These sandwiches are kind of addictive and filling and you have to make them yourselves. They are creamy, fresh, and taste like summer. I wonder how this filling would be with a tortilla chip dipped in it. 

We also drank some cucumber, watermelon, spinach, and mint juice yesterday morning (but I didn't get a picture). It was mostly pink. That was quite refreshing and lightly sweet. I will be having it for tomorrow's breakfast too.

Tonight we plan on eating these chickpea tacos, hopefully with a kale and fuji apple salad.

What are your go-to meals when you want to eat healthier than you have been?

Also, enjoy this picture of my guinea babies are so cute resting in their cage. :-)

Cinnamon Plus Chocolate Equals My New Addiction

Normally, I'm a chocolate cake girl. Once in a while I like a cookie or a pint of ice cream. Overall, though, I like to stick to cupcakes.

Recently, while constructing my grocery shopping list, I found myself needing yeast for the naan that was to go with our chana masala. The yeast only comes in packets of three so I ended up with two extra packets and no use for them.

Not that this was any sort of tragedy. Oh no. I had no trouble coming up with a use for the other two packets.

Cinnamon Rolls. The only reason I don't make cinnamon rolls on the fly is because I don't generally have dry active yeast lying around. 

But oh my goodness, these are just heavenly. Today's batch was the second this week. Ben made a batch earlier (I made the dough, he did the rest) and while they were definitely good, today's batch was better.

With the batch Ben made, I had him add chocolate chips to the filling. Today, I let the filling be and added a chocolate icing. I was originally planning on a traditional, vanilla icing, but I didn't have enough powdered sugar so I needed something to thicken it. Enter chocolate chips.

The end result was ridiculously good. Super chewy, decadent, buttery-cinnamony AND chocolatey. Does it get any better that? No, I don't believe it does.

I Like Meat Too Much

Being vegan, or even vegetarian for that matter, invites a lot of responses. “Where do you get your protein?” certainly tops the list along with, “Where do you get your calcium?” Some responses and questions try to trap vegans: “What would you do if you were stuck on a deserted island?” Some are funny: “What do you eat?” Sometimes tell people, “tofu, granola, and grass.” 

Some are downright frustrating. The one response that really gets to me more than any other is the seemingly innocent, “I could never be vegan; I like my meat too much.” Sometimes it’s not meat. 

Sometimes it’s milk, sometimes it’s cheese, lots of times it’s bacon.

The reason I find it so…maddening, to be blunt, is partly, that I’m never sure what to say. I feel like I’m walking on banana peels because I run the risk of being a pushy, obnoxious vegan. I also run the risk of being too passive if I don’t say anything. 

The best answer I’ve heard came from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’spodcast (though I can’t remember which episode). She advised her listeners to say something to the effect of, “I know how you feel. I used to love ____ before I learned what happened to the animals.” I’ve tried that, though probably not enough. It’s certainly a better response than, “yeah.” I often forget to say it because I’m kind of dumb struck. And bothered. To the core.

When I hear people say that, it kind of makes me feel like there is no hope or that maybe they’re looking for some sort of validation or approval that eating meat is okay. Maybe I’m way off base thinking that. It’s hard to say as I’m not them.

I often see pro-bacon pictures on my Facebook feed and I have to hide them because when I see, smell, or hear people gush about bacon, I picture this video I once saw (from Dr. Melanie Joy’s presentation on carnism) where a pig was suspended upside down and his/her neck was slit. The same video depicted a factory farm worker poking a pig in the eye with an electric prod. 

When people say how much they love dairy products, I can’t help but remember another video. It was probably the most heartbreaking clip I’ve ever seen. A mother cow had just delivered her baby, and immediately after, a man dragged the calf away from her to be taken to slaughter (veal). The mother ran after them in distress. The next second I was balling my eyes out. That’s when I realized that, for me, cheese was not worth the high cost of separating a mother and her baby.

I’m not really sure what the point of this post is. Maybe just to vent and see if any of you have felt this way.  

What response to veganism/vegetarianism leaves you feeling stumped and frustrated? How do you respond?

Also, how do you respond to, “I love meat way too much?”