Amazing farmers market

This weekend we had a chance to go to the local area farmers market - and it was amazing. We got this spread that you see to the left that includes pineapples, bananas, oranges, berries, mango, melon, beans, lettuce, carrots, zucchini, cucumbers, fresh basil, celery - and also four fresh pastries and three glasses of fresh squeezed juice (orange, carrot and pineapple) all for about 14 dollars. Really quite an amazing deal. The biggest thing is trying to find the best people to buy all these goods from (some vendors are better than others) and also making sure to use up everything you buy so it does not go bad.

So I think I've started making friends with our security guard who watches our block (Hector). I try to buy him a soda when we I go to the store - or when we got back from the market I gave him an orange we bought - just little stuff like that. The other night he knocked on our bars and gave us this fruit which I think he called a gauva. It looks about like a boomerang and the outside is really hard. But when you open it there are these huge seeds surrounded by a fleshy white substance that looks like mold. You eat the mold like substance and it is surprisingly good. I kinda equate it to eating sunflower seeds. It takes alot of work to get to the good part of this fruit - and the end result is probably not worth the hassle - but it is certainly a good time killer. I can see how as a security guard this would be the perfect fruit. All that being said, I found out from other missionaries that in general Costa Rican folks view security guards / maids / etc on the low end of the totem poll and generally will not associate with them. So I imagine that my reputation is totally ruined - if you were hoping to run with high society down here while visiting - it won't happen with me as I will forever be known as the gringo who hangs out with Hector.

Space in our kitchen runs at a premium so Christy and I went to EPA (think home depot - only the music playing in the store is all in Spanish...and when you leave the store the check every receipt like they do at Sam's club....and there are security guards combing the parking lot. Besides that, identical to Home Depot). We got some rope and little hooks so that we could hang our bananas like you see on the left. Bananas here are so cheap you end up buying tons - and our kids have been eating about 4 or so a day - so needless to say we have lots of the little yellow guys and we need somewhere to put them. I think this is a great idea except when Elizabeth realized she is tall enough to start pulling down the lowest bunch.

The other thing we did not know about Costa Rica is that little plastic and even sometimes metal stuff is pretty expensive. We were originally hoping to get some sort of hanging basket to put some of our fruit/veggies in to get them out of the way - but I'm sure something like that would cost 25 dollars here. Luckily in the garden section of EPA we saw these cheap wire planter baskets for about $1.5 - we simply removed the hay mesh from the basket and used some of our string and I think it works great. As you can see we wisely let Christy tie the ropes on the baskets because it was an exercise in patience which is not something that I excel at.

Here is one more thing that I tried to explain to a few folks and I think I failed. It is a hotbox - basically a box with a 15 or so watt bulb that you keep on all the time. On 'this' side of town (San Francisco de Dos Rios) I don't think it is needed quite as much but up by San Antonio de Belen it gets so humid all the time that moisture and mold can grow in your electronic equipment and ruin it. Also, books and computer paper get too moisture laden and either will not work in the printer or can even start to mold as well. So this box stays just warm enough to keep everything dry, but not dry out your wallet from electricity bills or worse yet, start everything on fire.