Central American Locavorism

We’ve had to alter our diets a bit here in order to save money. Some things here are real cheap and other things are pricey. The cheap things to buy are bananas, plantains, bananacitos (tiny bananas), pineapples, coconuts, papayas, potatoes, yucca, and a plethora of exotic fruits that I’d never seen up until now. You can even pat yourself on the back for being a locavore if you choose to eat this way. The best places to buy food are definitely the ferias (produce markets) that happen regionally in neighborhoods and towns each weekend. The one that I went to in San Jose truly knocked my socks off as I had never seen such amazin’ fruit!

I’ve also never seen anything labeled organic in the produce section of the markets here. We did find pesticide free bananas in the supermercado of one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in San José. I looked into it a bit and apparently it is pretty difficult to grow bananas organically here because of fungus and nematodes, but of course there is a big demand for it overseas. It also appears that almost all of the organic bananas grown here are exported to the U.S. and Europe, for yuppie consumption.

Below is one of the banana trees in the backyard. I love the beautiful giant phallus that hangs down from the nanners just beckoning to be pollinated. I had no idea that banana trees had such a thing. That’s like a phallus within a phallus within a phallus.
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The other thing that is local here is of course coffee, and Jared and I have been consuming our share of it lately. It’s now customary for us to have coffee in the morning, mid-morning and late afternoon. There are coffee plants growing in the yard here too. You can get a little bag of Costa Rican coffee for $2, but if you want the organic kind you are gonna pay about $10 for it.

Jared and I have both taken a liking to guaro, which is sugarcane liquor. We prefer to mix it with powdered guanabana (soursop). This stuff burns like hell, but at $4/liter it is the cheapest way to get drunk in Costa Rica. It is sort of the national beverage.

“In Costa Rica, the government nationalized its manufacture in an effort to quell the clandestine production of liquor. The “Fabrica Nacional de Licores” (National Liquor Factory) was founded for this reason, and currently produces the only legal brand, Cacique Guaro.“

One thing that is not local, but is super cheap is tobacco. Marlboro is the brand of choice down here. I remember visiting Europe and being shocked that everyone was smoking Marlboros, but the same thing is true of Costa Rica. I guess we mentioned once before that cigarettes are around $1.50/pack here. Jared was really taking advantage of that bargain for a while. He said he would chain smoke in the mornings while I was in town at the gym. Then he got sick, and I think he realized how disgusting it was. I watched him sit outside and smoke the last four cigarettes in a row until he made himself gag. He coughed up a lung that night, but he hasn’t had one smoke since. Buen trabajo (good job) Jared!

-L

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