Chestnuts in Central America? The breadnut tree, which is in the Mora family, produces a large oblong shaped fruit that has soft spikes covering it. It is known as the Castana (cast-on-ya) here in Costa Rica. It is a versatile seed that can be boiled, baked added into soups or dried to make the perfect
How to make your own Food Dehydrator using Solar Energy (the power of the sun) Why build a Solar Food Dehydrator? We built this solar food dryer because all of our harvests seem to come at the same time and we needed a way to perserve our food and seeds for later use. We must dry out seeds from
Pan de Elote is Costa Rica Corn Bread using Fresh Corn from the Cob Growing corn in the rain forest is difficult. Growing corn in the rain forest without chemicals is near impossible. Bugs, worms, heavy rains are just a few of the many reasons we have only a small amount of corn this year. We planted about
Banana Ceviche – how to use green bananas to make a fresh chilled soup Ceviche is a cold soup normally made with seafood or white fish. Most often the best ceviche is found served from the back of a pick-up truck along the side of the road. The cook, or driver as we like to
Value of $4.50 in Costa Rica for an U.S. expat in 2012 There are a lot and I mean a lot of things here in Costa Rica that are more expensive than in the U.S. Most of you can go to the local Walmart and pick up a new coffee maker for $9.99. Now it
A video on making tamales for christmas in Costa Rica. How we did our part by getting leaves from the yuti growing in our yard. We were lucky enough this year to have some friends invite us over to make tamales, which is a Christmas tradition here in Costa Rica. Our involvement was to bring
Araza Fruit, Araca Boi (Eugenia stipitata) Identification & Uses Araza a really sour, yellow, softball sized fruit that has a thin outer peel. So thin in fact that this fruit is not exported because it travels so poorly. Its center is filled with seeds and the surrounding flesh is creamy with an extremely pleasant smell.
Harvesting, Cooking and Preparing Pejibaye, Peach Palm Fruit Pejibaye, or Peach Palm, is a squash type fruit that grows high in the leaves of an extremely spiny and dangerous palm tree here in Costa Rica. Twice a year this palm opens up a huge clam shell leaf and white seeds hang on strings from it,
Cacao trees, fruits and how we roast the beans to make nibs We have approximately 25 cacao trees here on our farm in Costa Rica. Some of the trees have been hacked at over time in order to put up fencing and many had been left neglected with life sucking vines covering them. For the