Food.

Last week I made salsa. In San Jose I struck lucky and had the good fortune of meeting a Mexican who was more than willing to share a salsa recipe with me. I have been missing spicy Mexican food ever since I left Mexico (way back in April.) And so I found myself bitten by the "cooking-bug." In Costa Rica, the typical food has more of a sweet taste and I was appalled to find out that for the most part, they don't like spicy food! Blasphemy to my ears! So Liz took a trip to the local grocer and paid far to much for a pack of Jalapeños in order to appease her jonesing for a little kick in her "comida." In the United States we are blessed with the option to buy one Jalapeño at a time (usually the proper amount for any enjoyable food) if we so desire. This is not so in Costa Rica. For a salsa that called for one Jalapeño, I found myself buying ten. Well worth it. Off to the kitchen I went, not exactly sure of what I was up to. I pulled out a frying pan and plopped in a Jalapeño and a half. Although the recipe only called for one Jalapeño, I had used part of one the day before in my cooking and decided, "Why not add in an extra half? It needs to be used up anyway.... What can it hurt?" Perhaps too much spice is the reason people say "everything in moderation." But I proceeded to fry up my peppers. I was told to fry them up until blackened along with a tomato. I put a tomato in the pan and immediately thought to myself, "What on earth are you doing?" It did not put my mind at ease when the tomato started to hiss. Frying tomatoes is not necessarily a normal custom back home in the U.S. and for that reason I began to doubt my super chef skills. Plus, it's very difficult to blacken a tomato that only wants to roll around the pan. But carry on I did, ever wondering if the tomato would stop hissing or if it would blow up in my face. It did. (Just kidding.) I began to think what other fruits do you fry? Isn't that just a bit odd? I realized that I eat fried fruit almost every week. Make that deep fried fruit. Rice and beans are the staple diet here in Costa Rica (probably in every other Latin American country as well.) And with those rice and beans deep fried plantains are the norm. I'm not sure if I had ever really eaten a plantain prior to living here, and now I eat them regularly. And though it may seem a bit strange to you that we deep fry our plantains, it's actually quite tasty and helps keep the rice and beans from getting too boring. And so I fried up the tomato and Jalapeño and a half until I could stand it no more and put them onto a plate for a bit of dissection. You see that even though I was supposed to blacken my ingredients, the next step of the recipe called that I peel off the blacked areas. Interesting. I attempted to do so with burning myself although my lack of patience would not hear of it. After this was said and done... into the blender they went with a bit of onion and a clove of garlic. I pushed blend until my creation had turned into a hideous shade of dark olive green. I thought, "Oh dear, what have I done?!" I opened the lid and decided to take a whiff to see if it would be any good. My sinuses have never been so clear in my life. With one little sniff I was sent into a coughing spree. I could tell that it was going to be good salsa. I dipped a finger in just to try a little bit. Daring of me I know. With one little taste my tongue was sent into a full on blaze and I could hear myself screaming in my head, "WHY did you add that EXTRA half a Jalapeño?!?!!" I had done it. I had succeeded making a very spicy salsa. My craving for spicy food? Satisfied. And the salsa? After sharing it and giving much of it away.... there is still some left in my fridge being slowing eaten up one teaspoon at a time because that's about as much as I can stand.