Easter Sunday, 2017

Happy Easter Sunday, everyone. I pulled some prawns out of the freezer to thaw this morning, thinking that we would have them for dinner. I quickly put them back in the freezer when our neighbor Rose Mary came to our gate with a present of lots of cooked ham slices. Big thick slabs of honey ham ... so that's our dinner for tonight, along with roasted Greek potatoes and a vegetable. Thank you, Rose Mary!

Sadly, the only Easter present I had for Rose Mary was a bag of Lorsban, which is used here to destroy the vast underground ant colonies that cause so much damage. It's mixed with water (I think) in a pump type container with a wand that is inserted into the ground, and pumping action forces the chemical into the nests. We both use Byron as our gardener and he had used some of Rose Mary's supply on our ant nests so we wanted to replace it for her.

 

We had a lot of garden trash (basura del jardín) piled up waiting for removal, but we hadn't found anyone to do the job for us. This is what was at our front gate, the bags contain leaves, etc.:

 

And these bags were piled around the mango tree (the huge pile of dirt under the mango are ant hills):

 

A fellow on a moto stopped by this morning and eyeballed the mess and asked if we wanted it removed. We negotiated a price and this is how it was done:

 

He needed 5,000 colones up front to pay for gas for the truck that would be arriving, so we gave him that. We wondered if he or a truck would ever return and he was just collecting money in a novel way. But I had faith and, sure enough, in a couple of hours a truck showed up with him, another worker and a boss man. Unfortunately, the truck was not a top loader but a back loader so it made it difficult to shove everything in. If it had been a top loader, they could have compressed everything down. It was hot, dirty work. The boss man gave the orders and chatted with us. We had another round of negotiations:

 

Ignore "chilli jam" at the top - I think that was for some recipe or other. See the "cebolla morado"? That means "purple onion". Well, boss man noticed that part of our hedge had been stripped bare by leaf cutter ants and he told us to slice up a purple onion and scatter the pieces under the hedge. He said this would help deter the leaf cutters. I'll give it a try, can't hurt and no chemicals involved.

Anyway, they seemed happy to have the work, we were happy to have it done, and a round of handshakes and one kiss on the cheek finished the job.

April 1 to 7, 2017

This has been a good week. We've had two separate days of heavy rain - over an inch fell on each day. It has been so dry that it was much appreciated. We are going into our green season somewhat early this year compared to previous years.

Our new cedulas/Dimex (Costa Rican ID cards) arrived at our correos (post office) on Monday, April 3rd. They were supposed to be there on March 10th so just a little over three weeks late. We are legal residents for another two years.

We ordered two dinners again from Etnia Bistro Pub, delivered right to our door. This time we tried chicken saute with peanut sauce, cucumber salad with tzatziki, and pita bread - excellent.

 

A fellow artist is leaving Costa Rica and was selling some of his art supplies. I scored big time by buying this from him:

 

 

132 Prismacolor premier colored pencils, unused! All for only $60 USD. In Canada, just one of these pencils costs $2.20, so 132 Prismacolors would be $290.40 CAD! Now I have to learn how to use them.

I have quite a few orchids blooming right now:

 

Do you know what this is?

 

This is an orchid seed pod that burst open to release a gazillion tiny, tiny orchid seeds into the wind. They are almost like dust.

First Rain of 2017

On March 14, 2017, just after 4:00pm, we had our first decent rainfall in months. I took this video of the cooling tropical rain falling after so many months of dryness.

Not a drop since then, at least at our house. Now that April is close, we hope to see more rain in the coming weeks. The landscape is very dry and brown right now.

Etnia Bistro Pub

Etnia Bistro Pub is the first gastro pub in Atenas. It is located just off ruta 3, across from the gasolinera de Coopeatenas. Camilo and Nicole are the owners and chefs.

They have added a new service - Etnia Express - dinner at home with the option of picking your order up yourself at their restaurant or having it delivered to your house for a very reasonable service charge. Every week Camilo sends me the menu for the following week. A quick email to him with my selection completes my order. He emails back telling me what time he will be at our gate.

Last week, I ordered two Caribbean curried shrimp dinners. Here is the menu for that week:

 

Here is our delivered order:

 

It was delicious, lots of flavors. Lance isn't a fan of cilantro but he liked it in this dish because it had just the right amount. I love anything with coconut in it and thought the rice was very good. There were plenty of shrimp. Also included were banana chips. Total cost for the two meals was 10,500 colones (about $19 USD). C1500 was for delivery right to our house by Camilo himself.

Here is the menu for the week of  March 28 to 31, 2017:

 

Treat yourself and order dinner - no cooking!

Some of My Art

I've been painting horses and cattle for a long time. My art web page is here.

What do you do when you do not like a painting that you have created? This one, for example, I was never happy with it. I did not like the harsh bit, the overextension of the neck, the green color of the background ..... 

 

You do this ... cover it over with gesso and start again!

 

Empañadas

I decided this week to try making empañadas. I used this turkey/chicken recipe that I found at Laylita's Recipes. All the ingredients were in my kitchen, including a cooked chicken breast in the freezer, so I didn't have to go out and buy anything. I made Laylita's dough recipe - very easy.

This is the white flour that I use:

 

The package is decorated for Semana Santa (Holy Week) which this year runs from April 9 to April 15. The bags are also decorated with Christmas themes come December. Every time I see Nacarina flour bags, I think of this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macarena_(song)

This is what the prepared chicken filling looked like, sitting on an unbaked empañada before folding:

 

Empañadas folded, edges sealed and covered with an egg wash prior to baking:

 

20 minutes later, all cooked. Oops, some of the filling ran out - no problem:

 

The recipe made about 16 empañadas so lots left over to freeze for another day. What I like about these is that any kind of filling can be used, savory or sweet.

Eyes on Costa Rica - Update/March 5, 2017

The number of countries from where this blog has received visits has risen to 119, the latest including Bosnia & Herzegovina, Azerbaijan, Bolivia and, most recently on March 3, Mauritius. The number of individual places from where visits have been received is now over 3300.

Mauritius is a small island country about 1200 miles off the east coast of southern Africa and seems to have some of the trappings of Costa Rica. On the map below, it is highlighted with reference to Costa Rica by yellow circles.

 

The red dots identify places from where visits have occurred since September 29, 2016. The density would be significantly greater if all places both before and after that date were shown (see my October 4, 2016 blog entry).

I find it fascinating that someone in another part of the world is reading my Costa Rican blog. It's like having penpals everywhere and I'm learning about so many countries/places.

Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/mGxHtCFykzC2

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauritius

Official site: http://www.mauritius.net

CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/22/africa/mauritius-tropical-paradise-booming-economy/