Aero: Brittany Gleason – Costa Rica 2014 – Food and Dining
Aero: Brittany Gleason – Costa Rica 2014 – Food and Dining
Aero: Brittany Gleason – Costa Rica 2014 – Food and Dining
Brittany Gleason
Every meal I ate in Costa Rica had large portion sizes. I wasn’t sure if it was because we are Americans they thought we ate a lot or if that’s just how the natives eat there. I noticed that even though the portion sizes were large all of the food was healthy and fresh. The vegetables and fruits don’t have all the chemicals and preservatives on them because they have such a clean environment. My host family did not eat meals with us; Mayra always waited to eat with her son and granddaughter so we don’t really know how big their portions were. They usually would eat dinner late at night around 8 or 9pm. I notice Mayra would start preparing our dinner meals in the morning and they would cook all day. They weren’t frozen dinners, or quick meals that we make in the U.S.
For our first breakfast we were given the traditional Costa Rican breakfast that consisted of black beans mixed in rice with tortillas. We ate some of it but I think Mayra knew that it wasn’t our favorite. After that she gave us a cereal similar to our frosted flakes, with a few other foods on the side. Usually we had some sort of eggs, and fresh fruit. She also always put out some sort of bread, crackers, or tortillas with jam. The breakfast seemed to get old fast because it was the same cereal and choice every morning but it was very good either way.
Costa Rica 2014 Photo Gallery
Lunch was always on our own when we were out on excursions or at school. Costa Ricans have a typical dish they call a “casado” that includes your choice of meat, rice, black beans, a tortilla and either mashed potatoes or noodles. Usually the casados were very cheap. They sell casados at little diners called “sodas” which were all over the place. They also had basic lunch food like chicken sandwiches, dishes with seafood, hamburgers and pizza. I had the pizza once and it was different than what you would expect to receive but it was good. It was thin with a crust that tasted like saltine crackers and the toppings are different. The typical pizza topping there is ham and cheese instead of pepperoni and cheese. They also had fast food places like McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut. We were warned that they would not be the same as the fast food places in the U.S. but we wanted to try them for ourselves. I tried McDonalds and Burger King and both were okay. The McDonalds was different because it had crispy chicken on the bone like a KFC here. They also had separate lines specifically for desert there. For the last time we ate out, we went to a little restaurant called Vito’s, which was an Italian American restaurant, and I order a chicken parmesan sandwich. The sandwich was way better than any Italian American food I ever had in America.
Mayra would make us dinner every night and it was always too much for us to eat. Every night we would get a big portion of rice with meat on a plate. We would usually get a salad with just lettuce and tomatoes and no dressing. There was always a dish with vegetables on it and we would also get potato chips in a dish that we didn’t eat because everything else tasted so good. Mayra mostly only made us pork because she did not eat chicken and she said that beef wasn’t her favorite. A lot of times it was ground pork and always tasted good. I really liked when Mayra would make a stir-fry with pork, onion, corn, and peppers. She made that a couple times, and she would also take pork and stuff it in a big noodle then fry the noodle in egg. All of her food was good just different than what we would eat at home. I definitely tried several new foods in Costa Rica, and sometimes ate things I wasn’t fond of but the meals were always good.
Learn More: Study abroad with Modern Languages @ FLCC: Costa Rica!
– Brittany Gleason
The LEAF Project
www.leaflanguages.org
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