Tropicalsenior

Move over, I'm coming up!

Don't feel bad, I still don't quite get it. I guess it would help if we knew what treyf meant.

The national dish of Costa Rica is Gallo Pinto which is basically unseasoned rice mixed with unseasoned black beans. Most families have it three times a day. In the morning it is served with eggs and at lunch it is served with some type of meat. For dinner it's served with a shredded cabbage salad, a vegetable and some type of meat. Another ubiquitous meal is arroz con pollo which is served at every social Gathering. It is a seasoned rice served with a miniscule amount of chicken. One chicken can feed about 40 people. When we moved here 40 years ago, we used to comment on the physical fitness of the Costa Ricans. You very seldom saw a fat person. In the years since, the diet has changed drastically. Fast food chains have moved in and junk food is everywhere. Obesity is everywhere and even the little school children look like miniature Pillsbury doughboys. Another change that the diet has made is in the height of the people here. When we moved here, the average height of a Costa Rican man was about 5 ft 7. This younger generation is tall. There are 6 footers all over the place and even the young girls are tall. It's been interesting to see in such a short time how a change in diet can change the whole culture of a country.

The only brownie recipe that I have found that comes close to these is the Katherine Hepburn brownies. They are a little more work and I think that the ingredients of the scratch brownies actually cost more than the brownie mix.

Thanks. That's the best part of making these, having some to send for Carlos in his lunches and for my lunch during the week. Only mine never last long enough to make it into the freezer.

Wow. I couldn't agree more with that statement, in fact I could have written it myself. I think I'll take mine out this week and give it to my cleaning lady. I could use the storage space.

Made filled bread again for our Sunday snacking. This time it was Finnish Lihapiirakka, a ground meat filling in a slightly sweet dough. I had some dough left over so I just made a little round loaf. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

It would have passed through much more easily had it been lubricated with olive oil.

Ouch! I went through that 40 years ago and it's just as well you don't remember. I was in the hospital 10 days and for most of that, the only nourishment that I got was through a tube.

I can't either but some years ago I bought this to open water bottles and I found out that the little hook on the end slides right under those pull tops and peels them right open. No strength or dexterity needed.

I've noticed that down here a lot of food Packers are going back to the old sealed can and away from the pull tops. They must be more expensive to use.

You must be of the same mindset as I am when it comes to Starbucks. All their coffee tastes burnt to me. And I am from Seattle. I lived three blocks away from their original Starbucks location for years and I wouldn't even walk across the street to buy it.

Found this site that gives the ingredients of the chicken seasoning. There are all kinds of recipes for chicken seasoning on the internet so possibly you can find one that is similar and make your own seasoning just for this dish. BTW, Jamaican pimento is Allspice.

My lasagna always looks good when I take it out of the oven and I wait the requisite number of minutes before I cut into it and it falls apart and looks like the dog's dinner. Still tastes good. When I see it in the pictures set up by a a food stylist, it's always beautiful but it never looks like they cooked it enough. Yours looks wonderful.

However, I did find this article that explains why you should drink olive oil in coffee. Apparently it prevents everything beginning with athlete's foot, baldness, cancer, Etc. And that's just the first three letters of the alphabet maybe it even prevents xenophobia. It does caution however, that both coffee and olive oil are laxatives so that you can wind up with a rather crappy situation.

In my opinionated opinion, Starbucks alone is an abomination but this has got to be the worst that they have come up with. Coming from coffee country, all I want in my coffee is coffee.

Very happy to know that it was the beans this time and not you.

Have you thought about maybe sitting on the floor?

Well, I am back to the mundane. I used @kayb's recipe for light brioche and made a loaf of bread and dinner rolls to have when my friend Lenora comes up tomorrow. It was okay but I think I will go back to my own light brioche recipe. I don't think it was the fault of the recipe, though. I think it was the fault of the weather and me. It's just not as light and fluffy as I want.

It made a big difference in the taste, much better. I left out the cheese because I was afraid that it might weaken the wall and cause it to leak but everything else was the same. I won't make Stromboli any other way now.

I made stromboli today combining my usual Stromboli dough with Patrick's herb bread. I made the dough Just a little bit stronger and it really held up well and tasted great. Ready to roll. Before the final rise. Straight out of the oven. I'm really happy about the way that the dough has risen all the way through. I let the dough rise about half an hour longer than usual and cooked it about 20 minutes longer than usual at a lower temperature. But then again the longer rise time might have been because it is awfully cold here. I don't think that it's gotten over 70° to 75° all day.

We also have the original and Costa Rican clones available here. They just call it Salsa Inglais, which just means English sauce.

Nor do you have to dust them or wipe the spills off them.

More than happy to share. I used this recipe for Liliko'i Bars. I made half a batch and the only change that I made was to put 1/2 tsp of baking powder in the filling. I don't know what you have available for passion fruit juice, but I used this concentrate that we can get here. One suggestion that I would make is, do not pack the crust down. It makes a lighter bar and by packing it down it can turn into a concrete like substance.

That looks delicious. Is it this one? It sounds like it's really easy to make.