One activity we have always enjoyed doing is going out for breakfast or brunch. We’ve eaten at all of the restaurants that are open early for breakfast in the Grecia and surrounding area and had run out of places to eat at.
Lance came up with the great idea that we should start eating lunch at restaurants instead of breakfast - and our choices expanded enormously. So once a week each of us gets to choose where to have lunch.
First choice was Lance’s and he selected Olga’s Place in San Ramón, about a 35 minute drive from our house. I can recommend this restaurant - good food and fantastic views. We sat outside on a small covered patio. Our server was very nice and helpful. She suggested we have the red sangria and it was a good recommendation.
Menu photos:
My choice was the shrimp a la Diabla (and it was indeed spicy!):
Lance opted for pasta with jumbo shrimp:
Views from the restaurant:
We had occasion to drive to Atenas this past week - the town where we lived for six years when we first moved to Costa Rica. We had a craving for cabbage rolls and new reading material and the best place for both of these is Pequeña Polonia (Little Poland). This is the restaurant originally known as Kay’s Gringo Postres, owned by Kay and Tom Costello. It was one of the first restaurants we ate at in Atenas. There has always been a free lending library there and we’ve never run out of reading material in ten years.
The present owners are from Poland via Canada. Their menu reflects their background - the cabbage rolls are so good! I always order them with the dill sauce.
Take-away cabbage rolls with two salads (carrot and cucumber) and mashed potatoes:
Yesterday - Saturday - we decided to drive to Puntarenas for a seafood lunch. We left around 1030.
Here are the routes we took going to the coast and returning. We drove route 1 going (dark blue) and route 27 (grey) returning. Route 1 is the northern section of the Pan-American Highway, also known as the Inter-American Highway in Central America.
Route 1 is prone to slow movement and backups due to semi trucks coming from Nicaragua going to the region of the San José capital, plus there are lots of hills and twists and turns. I prefer route 27.
The drive to the Pacific takes you from the cooler mountain areas to the considerably warmer and more humid coast and you can feel the temperature changing as you drop further down from the mountains.
Our restaurant of choice was the Isla Coco’s Bar and Grill at the tip of Puntarenas and just across from the ferry that goes to Paquera or Naranjo on the Nicoya Peninsula. This was our first time at this restaurant and it did not disappoint. I had a craving for clams.
And we got them! Grilled clams - lots and lots of them. This was advertised as an appetizer but it took two of us to finish them up. They were delicious. The bread was so good and perfect for sopping up the very tasteful garlic broth they were swimming in.
Every customer is served a small bowl of seafood soup gratis. Mine had a shrimp and a crab claw in it. Lance’s was a shrimp and a mussel which he graciously gave to me ‘cause I love ‘em.
For refreshments, Lance ordered cold beer (Imperial) and I had the limonada hierbabuena, which is lemonade with fresh herbs. This is one of my favourites.
Our eyes were bigger then our stomachs because we could not make much of a dent in our main dishes and we ended up taking most of it home (para llevar = take out/take away).
My choice - the garlic prawns with roasted vegetables and mashed potato:
Lance’s order - grilled salmon, roasted potatoes and vegetables and grilled pineapple:
I highly recommend this restaurant. Service was fast and efficient. As for Covid, masks, hand washing stations, and distance seating was prescribed and we were seated outside.
Some photos of the restaurant:
The ferry to the Nicoya Peninsula as seen from the restaurant:
It was so nice to get away even for a few hours - especially to this place. The Covid restrictions can make one feel isolated. It’s not a long drive at all from our house. As I said to Lance - “So, you told me it was 1 degree Celsius (33.8F) this morning in Vancouver and raining”. Not anywhere near so in Costa Rica!
On Tuesday of this week, we had occasion to drive to the town of San Ramón, about 32 km away from our town of Grecia. It was a beautiful morning with clear views of the lovely countryside - hectares of coffee plants growing in neatly laid out rows on the rolling hills and dales and clear views of the beautiful countryside. There are lots of interesting towns to explore in the central valley.
Back home, clouds began gathering in the afternoon and we had an impressive thunderstorm. A made a video of it:
Our Cat likes to lie on top of our car during rain storms.
Yesterday (Wednesday), we had banking to do in Grecia and some shopping. Banco National is adhering very well to Covid-19 protocols - hand washing station outside, must wear mask, keeping one’s distance, control of how many people in bank at one time, hand gel sprayed before entering, bank personnel wearing face shields. This morning, lineups were sparse so I got my business done quickly. Then we went to Compre Bien for some groceries. We like to shop at 100% owned Costa Rican businesses so we patronize this store and also Super Rosvil.
Compre Bien also has excellent Covid-19 protocols. I’ve noticed that more and more people are wearing masks/shields compared to a few weeks ago so the message is getting out. We don’t use plastic or fabric bags - just load our goods into the cart and take them to our vehicle where we pack everything into two cardboard boxes.
We were getting low on fruit so here is what I bought. Clockwise from left: papaya, bananas, cas (aka Costa Rican guava) and dragon fruit (pitaya).
Dragon fruit is one of my favourites. The ones we find here in Costa Rica have a gorgeous red interior:
We have a cas tree in our backyard but I’ve never seen any fruit. So today I thought I would try some. This is what the cas looks like cut open. It tasted very tart! So I’ll try using it to make a smoothie drink.
Earlier this week, I told Lance that I didn’t know what to make for dinner. He replied that we hadn’t had macaroni and cheese for a long time, one of his favourites. But it had to be his mother’s recipe so that is what I made:
The recipe is so easy: boil up some macaroni - and spread one-third of it in the bottom of a baking dish (I used to use a bean pot that worked really well). Then add a layer of sliced cheddar cheese, then more mac, another layer of cheese, rest of the macaroni and the rest of the cheese. Pour over one cup of milk. I added salt, pepper and dry mustard to the milk. Cover and bake at 350F for forty minutes, remove cover and bake another 30 minutes to get that nice cheesy crust on top. We refry the leftovers for another meal with a salad. It’s a recipe that you can adapt to your own tastes but we stay with the original family recipe.
Now, moving on to the wearing of face masks during these trying times. You absolutely must wear one when out in public. Thankfully, I am seeing more and more people wearing them around our town and those that do not are becoming less and less visible. We have both plastic shields and fabric masks. My black mask is pretty boring - I was thinking of painting toucans on it but then wasn’t sure about washing it after it had acrylic paint applied. So I came up with the idea of putting pins on it:
So right now, I have on my mask a Canadian flag pin and an art deco horse pin that I found at an antique store. I’m going to switch things around with Canadian Coast Guard pins, an B-1 bomber pin and whatever else I have in stock.
