Tag Archives: personal

Costa Rican Cuisine

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We’ve only eaten out a few times, and one of those times was for (disappointing) Chinese while two other times were (mediocre to okay) pizza. But we have had actual Costa Rican food three other times and while it has its good points, I think there’s a reason it’s not as popular worldwide as other Latin fare, like Cuban, Mexican, or even Salvadorean.

The big turn-off for us is the mayo. Actually not just mayo but ketchup also seems to be a major ingredient. An enchilada, with meat, black beans, tomatoe, and yes, mayo and ketchup drizzled on top. French fries (everything seems to come with fries, which, to be honest, feels like an awkward fit — what happened to beans and rice on the side?) also come with both mayo and ketchup drizzled on top. A burrito with, instead of salsa inside, some kind of mayo-based special sauce.

It’s been a little frustrating, as we’ve constantly found ourselves disappointed by menus which feature burgers, fried chicken (oh, there’s so much fried chicken), and then a small selection of Latin fare. Then, even after we order Latin dishes, it comes with a burger-type “special sauce”.

The result is a sickly sweetness and creaminess to things that are supposed to be savoury and spicy. Of course I recognize there is a degree of cultural bias here. I can’t dictate what food is supposed to taste like. It’s all about what you’re used to. Obviously Costa Ricans like their food this way, and other countries, like Chile, have similar cultural traditions.

But it does make me suspect there has been a major US cultural invasion on the food. I wish we could go back in time to Costa Rica 25 years ago to figure out how much of what we’ve been eating is traditional and how much of it is part of a more recent trend to fast food.

Whatever the answer, we know what we like, so we’ll have to request no mayo next time we order.

Some Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Me

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While I was trying to track down a project from a former teacher (and colleague) of mine, I came across this interview I did a couple years ago. Or rather, a reprint of said interview.

1) What is your non-academic drudgery?
I’m a expensive inculcate information and math docent.
2) What is your information CV?
I monkeyshines a chaff on a B.Sc, majoring in physics, with a babies fellow in mathematics, followed away a B.Ed location, chief years advance (i.e., expensive school). Both of these degrees are from the University of Winnipeg, in Canada. The babies fellow is eminent, since being a expensive inculcate docent in my bailiwick requires a university CV in two teachable subjects.

And so forth.

Since it’s posted at Quebecbloque.com, I think some weird Google translating has gone on. Translated first into French and then back into English by a program, presumably. Some words of wisdom from your humble author to end on:

I‘m careful there crossing a specialization and getting too factious, but I cogitate on some things in our companionship monkeyshines a chaff on pull undecided when they shouldn’t be.

Think about that.

The Geography of Cooking

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How come the instant ramen noodles in Costa Rica are so much better than in Canada? Have they added some Latin spice to the old Chinese stand-by? Or maybe it’s the corn.

Of course, as a rule, Costa Rica is not the place to go if I you want to get good Chinese, Moroccan, or Ukrainian food. Certainly there should be some excellent Costa Rican food, perhaps some decent Cuban, Mexican, or Brazilian, if we do some digging. We’ve done most of our own cooking and not checked out many restaurants so far, but I’ll bet there are some regional gems — if not in our small town, then a bus ride away in San Jose. But we shouldn’t expect much beyond that.

It’s the mixed blessing of coming from a very multi-cultural country to a fairly mono-cultural one. If you were to map culinary traditions on a map of the world, you’d see most countries have one dominant flavour, with perhaps a few odd pockets of nearby traditions (Chinese restaurants in Japan, Chilean in Panama), and then you’d see a place like Winnipeg or New York and virtually every flavour in the world would meet there. So to leave a city like that for a place with few immigrants is to find authenticity, but lose variety.

Even after returning from Asia, I found I could still get good Thai, good (authentic, not Americanized) Chinese, good Korean, and good Japanese food. And of course I’ve enjoyed Salvadorean cooking since before I left. But since we’re not living in a country of immigrants anymore, we’re limited to what we can cook ourselves, and the local cuisine.

That’s not a complaint. When I was in China I embraced Chinese cooking (plus a favourite Korean restaurant, and I occasionally made the trip downtown for Japanese). Here we are trying to embrace Costa Rican cooking. It’s not that we’ll be sick of it after six months. Every culinary tradition includes a fair bit of variety within it. But I’m sure we’ll grow to miss certain things before we get back.

Costa Rica

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Well, here we are in Costa Rica. I’m officially freelancing full-time, and my services are always available. More importantly, my fiancée and our two pups also survived the trip. It wasn’t easy for our little man, but he’s a trooper, and the longest flight was only five hours.

(Photo by V.)

Plodding Publicist

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For the second time in a few months, I’ve had the same one-sided conversation with the same publicist from the same publishing house. One of the review publications to which I contribute received a press release asking for reviews, I volunteered to take a look, he proceeded to ignore the e-mail from my editor, the e-mail from me with my mailing address, the follow-up e-mail asking if he was still planning on sending it.

In both cases, the books are niche titles, an odd little non-fiction, and a translation from a foreign author that is not known here. These are the kinds of books that struggle to get enough exposure, and being one of eclectic interests, I try to do my part. Both times, the same series of e-mails from me to him. And never a response. Not one.

Now you know why you’ve never heard of these books. What a slacker.

Moving Day

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Tens of thousands of years ago, entire tribes might move from one place to another, carrying everything they owned on their backs. Now we need two U-Hauls for one person. That’s progress.

Home (def’n): That largish container where you store all your junk.

Marking His Territory

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We have two dogs in our house, a male and female, two and three years old, respectively (with rounding). When we were training our young miss, we used a squirt bottle as a last resort, when verbal commands and positive reinforcement couldn’t get her attention. Veterinarians and professionals from vet tech schools tell pet owners that spraying should be used when other methods don’t work.

To this day, she leaves the room if she sees someone, for example, spraying disinfectant on a counter-top, and she doesn’t like to be outside while we’re watering the garden. She’s still wary, though she hasn’t been squirted in years.

So you’d think she didn’t like getting wet. But at the park last night, she decided to sniff around the same patch of grass our little mister was, well, “spraying”. We’ve had close calls before, and usually give them a heads-up when one isn’t watching where they stick their head, but unfortunately, this time we were too slow.

It bothered us more than them. With urine dripping from her left ear, our little miss continued to go about her business, apparently unfazed. But it occurs to me, since he’s marked his territory, and with no objection from her, this may mean our puppies are officially engaged.

Reviewer Cred

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I’ve made somewhat of a surprisingly realization recently. I don’t need to pay for books anymore. It turns out that if I ask, publishers will pretty much give me what I want for free. I found this out a few months ago when the publicist for a book I was looking forward to passed over all the outlets I normally review for. I decided to take a shot at simply contacting the publicist and asking if I could have a review copy, providing links to a couple recent books I’d reviewed for that publisher, and basically saying I could publish the review wherever they wanted.

I wasn’t sure I had the reviewer cred to pull it off, but the book arrived shortly and, emboldened by my success, I went down my Amazon wish list and started grabbing publisher imprints and sending e-mails. So far no one’s turned me down. In some cases there was no e-mail response, but the book and press kit still arrived promptly. I’ll still buy books — I read as much stuff from decades or centuries ago as recent releases, and that’s what used bookstores are for, after all — but for those brand new titles that still have publicists working them, I’ll hit them up for a copy.

***

Although my first foray into writing for an audience was in my student days, for my university newspaper, I’ve been reviewing books for various online magazines nearly as long as I’ve been writing news articles. And I still enjoy getting advanced reading copies of work I’ve been looking forward to. I thought it was a pretty sweet deal as a student still in my teens, and it still seems like a good deal to me today.

I know that technically I could save the two hours I typically spend on a review for paid writing work instead, and then buy the books I want with money left over, but you have to break it up. Some of my paying gigs are of a technical and very constrained nature, utilizing my scientific background and following very specific style guidelines, and it can get tedious. I need to always remember that I enjoy writing, and a good way to do that is to write things that I want to write, not just what I’m being paid to write. This blog should also ideally fall into that category.

And there is a balance. I prefer a certain degree of scheduling tension, which forces me to do this “for the love” writing within a reasonable time-frame, and on a regular basis, and that’s why I commit to a schedule for my unpaid writing just as I do with my paid writing. Agreeing to review something is a perfect example of writing for the joy of it, but still being committed to a reasonable turnaround time. Of course, there is a little more leeway in my schedule than with my paid work.

The Freelance Life

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I started this site — which is now, and likely will continue to be, primarily a blog — because I’ve recently started writing full time, and I thought I could justify grabbing my own little piece of the Web. I foresee this as a focus of organization for myself, more to help me keep track of my ongoing projects than to promote them, or myself. It seems like I’ve been writing articles and essays and, yes, blog entries, in my head for some time now, and I need a place to get it down.

I’m sure the blog will develop its own focus over time. One of the things I hope to do is share some of the nitty gritty details that have taken me from part-time writing to being able to take a year off from my day job and being able to pay the bills with words. The full-time writing experience, for however long it lasts, is also something I’d like to get down for posterity. And of course, I’m always looking for work, so any readers out there are invited to contact me for my services.

We’ll leave it at that for now. See you soon.