Aero: Ashley Hager – Costa Rica 2014 – Food and Dining

Aero: Ashley Hager – Costa Rica 2014 – Food and Dining

Aero: Ashley Hager – Costa Rica 2014 – Food and Dining

Ashley Hager

Food! Where to begin! Food was a large part of our experience. Not only because we have to eat to nourish our bodies but it’s also a large social aspect. Meal times in Costa Rica were a lot different than meal times in the United States. At home we always seem to have a set schedule of when we are going to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner and I feel that there is a lot of snaking in between meals. However, in Costa Rica there is not really a set time schedule you really just eat meals when you have time to and there isn’t a lot of snaking in between meals. The reason why there is not a lot of snacking in between meals is because the meals given are so large you can’t eat anything else in between because you know your next meal is also going to be large. My roommate Katie and I always ate breakfast with our host mother. We usually would have a mixture of various foods. Some mornings it was pancakes and honey, other times it was eggs, ham (lunchmeat), and slices of mozzarella cheese, bread, and fruit. Other mornings we would have cereal, and we would always have the choice of coffee and apple juice. One thing I found to be very different is they don’t have coffee makers like in the United States they have stands that hold a cloth filter where you put the coffee grounds and you boil water on the stove and dump the water over the coffee and it flows into a cup under the stand. The more and more I got immersed into the culture I found they don’t rely on machine like we do. In addition, eating breakfast with our host mother was different from eating with my family at home. With my host mother we always ate at the table in the kitchen together but at home my family eats in the living room in front of the television.

Costa Rica 2014
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Lunch most of the time took place in a restaurant near the location we were visiting. Lunch was one of the biggest meals of the day. The typical meal served for lunch in Costa Rica is called “Consado” and you got to choose your choice of meat, most of the time I got “pollo” chicken. Consado con pollo is a dish that consists of chicken, sweet squash or mashed potatoes, salad, rice, and black beans. It was always way to much food to eat at one sitting but the dish was very cheap for the amount of food it came with, the price average around to be $4-$5. There were drinks that were similar to the United States like soda, water, and juice. However their juice and smoothies were made from fresh fruit and it was absolutely delicious. I think the fourteen days I was in Costa Rica I ate my weight in fruit, nothing tastes better than a fresh pineapple, or strawberry smoothies with fruit collected that day, which only coasted on average $2. Their soda also has a different flavor than in the United States. We found out that there soda contains sugar cane instead of high fructose corn syrup which is a lot healthier for you. We usually ate lunch as a group with our two professors and sometimes our professor Jaxiny came along. Most restaurants that we visited had menus that were also in English and there were waiters that knew some English. Costa Rica is all about attracting tourists to bring in money so I think that’s why they accommodate us so well.

Dinner was also mostly with our host families. Maria Marta our host mother was a great cook and seemed to be considerate on the proportions of food. Most of the time Maria Marta would cook us dinner and then tell us good night. At first it felt awkward to have her cook us food but not eat with us, but after a while her son Marco would eat with us. Every night we would eat something different. Some nights we had fish and mashed potatoes, sometimes we had sandwiches, or pizza, or spaghetti, or asparagus and rice, or chicken and salad, or risotto, or tortillas. Dinner was always delicious and after our long days we wanted to eat dinner and relax until we went to bed. Overall, food was a large part of our experience and helped us understand the Costa Rican culture and their values of food.

Learn More: Study abroad with Modern Languages @ FLCC: Costa Rica!

– Ashley Hager

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