Food 10 -- Japan snacks

I like Japanese food and I LOVE Japanese snacks (one of the stores that my sister and I always visit when we go home to visit our parents in Washington is Uwajimaya -- possibly the best Asian market EVER!). I drew a sketch of some Japanese snacks that I would like to try (click on the picture and you will see it bigger in a new page):
Strong Tomato Pretz (pretzel-like sticks with a strong tomato flavor)
March of Koala -- Honey Pancake (little koala-shaped cookies with a honey pancake taste)
Rich Toppo -- Green Tea Cheesecake (thin cookie tubes filled with green tea cheesecake)
Kabaya Watermelon Candy (hard candies that taste like watermelon and look like pink and yellow watermelons)
Lotte Toppo -- Vanilla & Salt (thin cookie tubes filled with salty vanilla flavor)
Glico Cheesecake Collon (I love Collon cookies! I have only tried vanilla but I think cheesecake will be even better.)
Lotte Blueberry Gum
Green Pea Pretz (pretzel-like sticks with the flavor of green peas)
Rich Toppo -- Black Sesame Pudding (thin cookie tubes filled with black sesame pudding)
Pocky Men's (Dark chocolate pocky -- why are they called "Men's"?)
Meltykiss Green Tea (Green tea flavored soft chocolates)
Pucca Chocolate -- Creamy Vanilla (Chocolate-covered fish-shaped cookies filled with vanilla cream)

YUM! I can't wait to go to Uwajimaya now!

Food 9 -- Pejibayes

Yesterday, our neighbors gave Carlos and me a bowl of recently-boiled pejibayes. These are fruits of the palm Bactris gasipaes (agoutis and peccaries love them!) and are only edible (for humans) after boiling. People here eat them with mayonnaise.


I've had a couple of pejibayes, but I really don't like them. They are really nutty and very very dry and fibrous. Carlos likes them, but attributes this to the fact that they were a special, rare treat when he worked in a remote forest in Colombia. I guess if I only ate rice for days and days, I would get to like pejibayes too!

The B. gasipaes are tall palms with spiny trunks. I've recently seen a lot of birds feeding on the unripe fruits up in the trees and sometimes they knock fruits on the ground where the peccaries come to gobble them up.

Food 8 -- Felt strawberry

Last night our refrigerator died. There was a big puddle on the floor and Carlos noticed that it wasn't actually cold inside. Our landlord (and his son and HIS son too) came over to investigate the problem and said basically "yup, it isn't working." Hmmm. That was sudden! We gave some of our perishables to them for safekeeping in their fridge until we could get ours working again.

Meanwhile, I made a little felt strawberry last night while watching one of the best TV shows ever: Firefly. I don't really like this felt strawberry though so I don't think I will make it again. It does look like a strawberry right?
In other news, this morning we opened the fridge and it is working again! Weird? Our landlord is still going to take a look at it to figure out what's going on -- I feel that our little brown fridge isn't going to last much longer...

Food 7 -- Iron Chef

Iron chef is one of my favorite food-themed shows of all time (the original, Japanese show, NOT the American version). I watched this whenever I could back in high school or college on the Food Network. The premise is unique and interesting: a challenger, while competing against a chosen Iron Chef, cooks as many delicious dishes as he/she can in 1 hour involving a theme ingredient. Whoever makes dishes that best capture the taste of the theme ingredient wins! Usually, the final dishes aren’t things that I would particularly love to eat, but sometimes the chefs do make foods that I would try. Usually the theme ingredients don’t sound very appetizing to me (e.g. natto -- fermented soybeans), but sometimes the ingredient sounds delicious (e.g. strawberries, lobster, potato).

I especially like the actor who portrays Chairman Kaga in the program. Kaga is supposed to be an eccentric gourmand and he loves to eat yellow peppers. I also like the enthusiastic commentators and instant re-plays that happen during all the cooking action.

Allez cuisine!

Food 6 -- (200th post!) Baked treats

Hey, I've made it to post 200 -- Wow, that's a lot of posts! I hope I can keep this little bloggie going for at least 200 more.

Back to food.

I am not much of a chef (my sister inherited all the chef genes), but sometimes I do like to bake. However, since I have no oven at home and the only oven I have access to doesn’t heat evenly and takes HOURS to get even remotely hot, I never bake anything here in Costa Rica. When I return to the US (and an oven), I plan on baking up some treats so I have bookmarked a few recipes that I’ve randomly encountered online. Here are a few that I really want to try:

• Pumpkin roll (This is the only recipe I’ve made before -- one of my favorite cakes!)
• Green tea cheese cake (I really love green tea anything!)
• Eggnog pound cake
• Marble molasses pound cake
• Gingerbread

Food 5 -- Fried ants

I want to warn that this post might be a little hard to stomach for some people. It involves insects as food. If you think this is gross -- turn back now!

Okay, yesterday Carlos and I heard about a massive emergence of Atta ant (leaf-cutting ant) queens. This is a fairly rare event involving hundreds of huge (~ 2.5 cm long) reproductive queens venturing out to found new colonies.
Apparently, these ants are fried up and revered as a tasty treat in a small region of Colombia so we collected a bunch and brought them home to try. First, we removed the wings, then cooked them up in a large, very hot pot until the ants were crispy.
I tried 2 ants and they weren't that bad. They really didn't taste like much: basically crunchy burnt popcorn seeds is the closest I can describe them as. We brought our cooked ants to a dinner party last night and a bunch of people tried them...with mixed reactions.
I don't mind eating these, but in my opinion, they were a lot of work for only a little payoff. I would rather cook up popcorn or eat some sour cream and onion Pringles than chomp on more ant queens!

PS. These ants have also been covered in chocolate and sold in fancy department stores throughout Europe. Would you try them?

Food 4 -- Chicken salad sandwiches

Happy Fourth of July to all of my USA compatriots!

Anyway, last night I had a really delicious dinner and, since I remembered to bring my camera home (I rarely do), I took pictures. Carlos and I made chicken salad sandwiches, but the best part of these sandwiches isn’t the chicken -- it’s the accompanying fixings!


We had some baguette-like bread saved so we used that instead of the plain white Bimbo brand (yup, that’s the brand of the bread here). First, we boiled some chicken, shredded it, and added a little mayonnaise. I sliced up onions, tomatoes, and (the best part) avocado for our sandwiches. I also added some sliced cheddar cheese to mine.


Once everything was ready, I piled everything together and voila -- delicious sandwich!

Food 3 -- Food combos

Unique (but delicious to me) food combinations:
• Toasted wheat bread with mayonnaise.
• Toasted sourdough bread with feta spread and chopped onions.
• Dill pickle wrapped in alternating layers of sliced salami and cream cheese.
• Dill pickle and cheddar or goat cheese.
• Mexican-style hot chocolate with pieces of Havarti or Gouda cheese stirred in (this is a Colombian favorite).
Obviously, none of these are good for you, but they are nice treats that I only get to eat very rarely.

Food 2 -- Cheese

Living in Costa Rica, there are certain foods that are very rare or downright impossible to find. I really don’t mind this, but sometimes I would like to have a treat and a little taste of something different.

The food item that I miss the most is probably cheese. There IS cheese here, but there are only three vague varieties to find easily: cheddar (my favorite of the bunch), “gouda”(really a bland hard white cheese that is not gouda at all), and queso Turrialba -- also known as squeaky cheese. Queso Turrialba is a really tasteless wet, slimy cheese that squeaks against your teeth when you chomp on it. Meh, not my favorite. I really miss goat cheese, feta, ricotta, Dubliner, and many more cheeses (I think cheese may be my favorite food), but I don’t mind not having them now because I know I will be able to eat them once I get back to the states. However, what Costa Rica lacks in delicious cheese, it makes up for in many more ways!

Food 1 -- Macarons

Today is the first day of July ... that means this is my first entry for NaBloPoMo for July (with the theme of food) -- I almost forgot!

Yesterday, I woke up with a very strong craving for a cookie. Unfortunately I don't have any cookies and we won't be going to town for a few days. The reason I really wanted a cookie was because I had a dream that I was in France wandering around and eating a very fancy type of cookie -- the French macaron (not to be confused with the American-style macaroon made with coconut). I have never eaten a macaron, but I am sure that I would like them. Macarons are made with almonds, egg whites, and sugar. The cookie is comprised of two crispy, but delicate halves that sandwich a layer of sweet filling (a ganache). Macarons come in many, many intersting flavors (e.g. almond, chocolate, anise, lemon, caramel, pistachio, lychee, raspberry, vanilla ... there are to many to list!). One day, I will eat a macaron -- maybe in Paris!
(image courtesy of Laduree)