With every food and drink I have tried, I went in with an open mind. With every bite of a new food, I try to absorb all the flavors before I form an opinion. I might have to take a couple more bites/sips before I can tell whether or not I like it. Lucky for me, there has yet to be a food or drink that I have tried here in Costa Rica that I did not like. I like to try new foods because it makes me feel closer to the culture.
Living with a host family has allowed me to see how food is prepared here. You need enough time to be able to cook a meal because, for the most part, everything is made from scratch. There are very few things that would have been frozen or came from a can. This makes a big difference as the flavor of everything tastes super fresh! There is a lot of cutting up vegetables and cooking ingredients on the stove. My host mom rarely uses her oven to make food. At times, to make different types of sauces, my host mom will use her blender to mix all the ingredients together. Laslty, the food here (whether at home or in restuarants) is always made of out love.
The food is indeed connected to the local environment. There are many fruits (such as variations of mangos) that are only grown in the drier, hotter parts of Costa Rica. Likewise, even coffee requires specific conditions to grow such that the towns with those conditions will have more variety of coffee than others. Moreover, the rice and beans made with coocnut milk is only found in the Caribbean side of Costa Rica.
