Guava pastries

Here I am enjoying my coffee and my guava puff pastry at a reposteria.

It is Sunday afternoon and I am tempted to have something sweet with my coffee. I had brunch around 10:30 and now it seems like a long time ago... but dinner will be served no sooner than in 4 hours.
I open the fridge, look around.... and see two big, round cans of guava paste I brought for my daughter.

She is the one, who discovered a neighborhood reposteria with great Guava pastries when she visited me in PR in November.... and initially it was just her who ate the pastries while I was trying to be close to 100% on living food diet. But once I tried them, boy.... anytime she drove by that reposteria after that my percentage points of living food went definitively down! But every now and then those pastries are worth going off your diet for a brief moment :-)

Daughter is braving the weather right now, playing a tennis match, and will arrive hungry in about half an hour, so I decide to bake those guava pastries for her...and for myself, too, ;-) OK, OK, I'll use the light variety of the paste, if you insist.

I quickly check the freezer: hurrah, there is frozen puff pastry in here.

Thus in less than an hour we shall be enjoying our gourmet Puertorican coffee with freshly baked Puertorican guava pastries.

Please, drop in, join us :-) . You are very welcome!

I broke my New Year's resolution :-((

I resolved to not move for a year and less than 3 month later I am moving again. From the beach to the mountains, to the rainforest. But since I am remaining on the island, I guess I can still play Robinson Crusoe, just a tad more inland :-).

I am planning to move myself - and the cats - during the weekend. But I found out yesterday afternoon that two new friends of mine from Eye on the Rainforest, Javier and Steve, managed to rent a truck and will come today to move all my stuff, that won't fit into my car with me and the cats, to Ursula's casita, located in the middle of route 184 between Patillas and Guavate, that I'll be renting from her, while she is back to London after her winter visit to PR. So I am in a hurry packing today, could use some help... and see how helpful these two are?

Saturday night at la lechonera

This is the star of la lechonera: roasted suckling pig

When you take Guavate exit from highway 52 and follow road 184 down towards Patillas, after a few miles you'll come to a place where several lechoneras are operating side by side serving whole roasted pig, like at the picture above.

All those places are - as the locals tell me - most crowded on sunday afternoons, when carloads and busloads of hungry people descent on them.

We = some of the people from Eye on the Rainforest, 3T , Andres, Ursula, Steven and I went there on Suaturday evening. There was a crowd, blaring music and plenty of food, though ordering had to be done by pointing, due to the noise.

I forgot the name of the one my local friends unanimously declared the best of them all, but it is easy to find, as it is located on the right hand side of a structure with humongous Tres Reyes Magos columns gracing its front.

Andres, Ursula, Steven

I was planning on ordering some of this famous Puerto Rican specialty, lechon asado, so lovingly described by a fellow blogger, Speaking Boricua, just with salad, but there was no salad to be had. Instead there were all those starches I was walking around at the grocery stores: batatas, yautia, malanga, name, yuca, and some others, and I was persuaded to try at least a bit of each. Not sure if any of them is actually healthy, but I liked yautia (not particularly caring about any of the others - perhaps they are an acquired taste), and when compared to roasted pig, yautia should win hands down a healthiness contest - I presume.

Andres, 3T and Steven

The food was good and inexpensive - a dinner for five with drinks came to under $40 - an incredible bargain in pricy Puerto Rico. The company was superb and I finally - after almost 5 months in Puerto Rico - managed to try this local specialty.