My Pura Vida

Stopping to Reflect on the Thanksgiving Holiday, This Year and Last

Today is the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.  It is a good time for me to stop and reflect upon the past year.  This time last year I was attending classes in Costa Rica.  No holiday there.  It was just another school day.  It was almost by accident, that the North American students remembered to wish each other Happy Thanksgiving during the lunch break.  But, in the evening about 16 of us gathered at our favorite restaurant in town for a tasty vegetarian dinner.  It was a happy celebration among friends.

This year, back in the States, I searched the web for a list of restaurants open in the San Francisco Bay area for vegetarian options.  The few restaurants that are open have "prix fix" menus that are generally over priced and do not offer the same variety as their regular menu.  Choices were limited for anything other than the traditional fare, especially when seeking vegan dishes. This means we will go for the standby, Indian food.  Cooking at home is certainly an option, but when it is just two people it is nice to get out.

No matter where I celebrate, I acknowledge tothe universe that I have had an amazing year.  I am so thankful for the opportunity that I have had to go live in a foreign country and take a year off to focus on my own personal development.  I highly recommend it!  It is incredibly valuable to experience living outside the United States and participate in another culture.  Friends and colleagues have been so welcoming upon my return to the country.  The gracious responses I receive each week at work as I come across people that I haven't yet seen since my return are very meaningful to me. 

See more about how I am thankful everyday on Naturally Connected. 

Have You Visited the Baking Fairy?

Just a week before I was to return to work from my year leave of absence, I learned of a colleague in our Menlo Park office who decided to pack up her life and move to Costa Rica.  She arrived there early this month, and is preparing to open a bakery/cafe in Montezuma soon.  Bookmark her Baking Fairy blog to learn more about her adventures opening a new organic business in Costa Rica.  I wish her much happiness. 

Costa Rican Edible Adventure

Take a look at what it is like to live off the grid in Costa Rica, practice permaculture and sustainable living.  At the Punta Mona Center for Sustainable Living about 75% of their vegetarian diet is home grown in the forest.  Earlier this year host Stephen Brools produced a video that shows the many flavors of the tropical country, and he did a pilot of his Edible Adventure show on the Travel Channel.  Punta Mona's Kopali Organics brand of organic specialty foods from Costa Rica and Mexico can be found in Whole Foods stores across in Southern parts of California, Arizona and Nevada. 

The Slow Poisioning of India - And Others

While living in Costa Rica it was a greater challenge finding organic foods than what I had been used to in California.  However, over the year that I lived there, the quantity available from when I first started living there to when I left was noticable.  Now that I am back in the U.S., shopping at Whole Foods makes it much easier.  I have been enjoying foods like heirloom tomatoes and nectarines that I couldn't get while living in Costa Rica. The produce section is full of summer fruits and vegetables right now, that are labeled, often with information about the farms they came from.  However, after viewing the video Slow Poisoning of India today, I realized that there is another issue with my diet that needs to be addressed.  My boyfriend Jeet is from India, and many of the foods we eat are imported and purchased at one of the many Indian markets in the area. 

It is a fact that developing countries don't have the same regulatory controls over pesticides, and their foods are often much more contaminated than even the "conventional" foods we get here in the United States.  When these foods are imported in, most often we have no idea of where they have come from specifically and what chemicals were used on them. 

Jeet comes from Punjab, the largest farming region in India.  Several of the farmers interviewed in the film are from this region.  I can only imagine what kind of chemicals Jeet may have been exposed to from the fields while he was growing up.  Earlier this year, he went back to visit for the first time in seven years.  He spoke to some of his family members who are still farming about the dangers of some of the chemicals that they are using in and on the foods they produce.  They didn't want to listen to what he had to say.  They took offense to his going to the U.S. to live, and now coming back to tell them how to run their business. 

But now he and I have a challenge.  We have to figure out what foods we are buying from the Indian store are really safe for us to eat.  I don't even know if there are such thing as organic foods imported from India.  Some of the foods are labeled with an Indian brand, but made in the US or Canada.  This would mean that they have met the regulatory controls in the countries where they are produced, however that doesn't guarantee safety by any means. 

The fact that we are eating all these imported foods is another whole issue.  It is much better for us to eat foods that are from local farmers who are accountable to their customers. 

This is a personal "environmental security" story that allows me to share some of my learnings over the past year in Costa Rica.  Now that I understand much more about the human induced dangers to our global ecosystem, from pesticides and other chemicals, as well as the global food supply, it is now up to me to use the knowledge to arrive at better solutions.  The first step is figuring out how to make adjustments in my own purchasing decisions. 

See this related article from Reuters today. 

Fresh Lechee

This pile of fresh lechee fruit was at a beautiful fruitstand on the southern pacific coast of Costa Rica.  I haven't seen fresh lechee at the regular supermarket, only at the farmers stands on the side of the road.  My friends and I gathered large bags full of the fruits for our afternoon snacks.  After peeling the soft spiny outside shell, the white fruit surrounds the seed.  A tasty treat!

Are Those Dishes Really Clean?

The only place in the casita that has hot water is the shower.  That means no hot water for doing dishes.  Can one really get the dishes clean with only cold water?  My mom would be appalled at the thought.  "The dishes need to be sanitized,"  she would say.  Well, the truth of the matter is many parts of the world do not have such a luxury.  So what is my strategy for dishwashing?

Well, if there is something greasy or a container that had some old food in it, I usually to let the container soak in several rounds of soapy water over a period of days.  Once the containers have been washed and dried, the next best resource is the sense of smell.  If I can still smell remenants of the food on the dish after it has been washed, I know it needs another round of cleaning.  If the ants attack the dish drying rack, I also know I didn't do a sufficient job of cleaning.  Their sense of smell is better than mine!

The job is not done however, once the dishes have dried and been put on the shelves.  Before using the dishes they must always be checked once again for bugs that may have visited while sitting on the open shelves, and also smelled once again.  If the dish wasn't thoroughly clean in the first place, the smell will still linger and often increase over time.  At that point I know to give the dish another round of washing.  Most of the time I will at least wipe the dish off with a towel before using it, or sometimes qive it a quick rinse just to be safe.

I did a google search to find out more information about cold water washing, and there wasn't a lot of info.  Perhaps that is because the people who don't have hot water in their homes don't have computers!  I did find a funny blog post on cold water washing from a guy in Florida and an interesting European study comparing results of cleaning dishes by hand.   

Bargain of the Season

Its mango season in Costa Rica.  This week I bought a bag of six organic mangos at the market for 340 colones, which translates to about 67 cents.  In the US, imported mangos sell for a couple of dollars each!  This was such an amazing deal, I had to share. 

Tomate de Arbol

I was very excited when I found tomate de arboles (tamarillos) in the markets here.  I first had this fruit as a fresh juice in Ecuador.  It grows at high altitudes in tropical and sub-tropical zones and was originally cultivated by Peruvian Indians.  They are a cousin of the eggplant and grow in clusters of three or more.  Tamarillos provide a moderate source of vitimin C and A and contains about 50 calories for a half cup.  Ripe fruit can be refrigerated in plastic bag up to 3 weeks.

They require peeling and then seeds to be scooped out.  Use a vegetable peeler or immerse fruit in boiling water a minute or two. Plunge in ice water, then pierce skin and slide it off. 

Aside from fresh juice made from a simple sugar water mixture, they can also be added to a fruit salad. A mysterious spicy flavor develops when they are combined with other fruits. Slices can be dipped in honey; served on ice cream, pudding, or in yogurt.  They can also be used to make a spicy chutney.