Tomatillo gazpacho and other cold soups for hot weather

For our last dinner in Atlanta I made this fabulous tomatillo gazpacho according to a recipe from Eating Well, my favorite culinary magazine.

I changed the recipe somewhat, using lobster instead of shrimp and it was both divine and not prohibitively expensive: I bought a lobster from World Market ( a Dekalb County Farmer's Market in Atlanta, Georgia). They selll seafood (crabs, lobster) there at half price if they don't sell on the day defrosted: thus the big lobster for two, marked at $16.95 was only half that. A great deal.

We had a nice, crisp, very dry blanc de blanc with it.

I love cold soups in hot weather. I learned to love them as a child. Not only the traditional Polish/Lithuanian chlodnik (here in a simplified version) of red beets and cucumbers, but also Polish sour cherry or rhubarb cold soup , or any of famous international cold soups like vichysoisse, tomato or almond gazpachos, cucumber soup, etc.

And now, that I am joining the first (?) CSA farm in Puerto Rico, I hope to be able to make both the tomatillo gazpacho, an avocado cold soup and other fruit or vegetables cold soups in PR here, too.

Siempre Tres Vidas, the CSA farm of Silka Besosa is in Aibonito, but its first test market is in Rincon area.

Silka offers to deliver the weekly baskets (price at $30 each) to the homes of her subscribers in Rincon and - lucky for me - as far as Aguada Beach. I am sure she will deliver also anywhere between Aibonito and Aguada, so, if you want fresh organic veggies and herbs and would like to support a very much needed endavor NOW, in the deadest of season, please do not hesitate and email Silka ( siembratresvidas@gmail.com) right away. Then, on Saturday you could enjoy your first share of summer harvest, which has still six weeks to go.

Here is what Silka was delivering to her subscribers last Saturday:

THIS WEEK’S BOX – WEEK 5
Astro Arúgula
Brandywine Heirloom Tomatoes
Early Long japanese Eggplant
Flat-Leaf Parsley
Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans **
Magenta Magic Orach
Mustard Spinach replaced by Japanese Mizuna mustard green
Purslane**
Royal Burgundy String Bush Beans**
Roma Paste Tomatoes
Santo Cilantro
**These three items are available in very limited quantities. The Kentucky beans are on their last days of yield…being replaced by a new batch, which we expect to be producing in a few weeks. Purslane is extremely hard to germinate. We only achieved about 30% of our seeds. Sorry! Posibly after this first cut, it will gain strength and build itself up to a higher yield. The Royal Burgundy beans are really a test-run. They look beautiful! If it looks prolific and healthy enough in our environment, we will pursue a full crop next time.
It looks like the Corni di Toro stuffing peppers are in no hurry to mature! Sorry, guys, I hope by next week!
Other News From the Farm
The Asian Yamato Cucumbers and the Homestead Tomato transplants also look very healthy and promising!
Lima bean seedlings are looking great! We are waiting for the full moon this coming Thursday in order to transplant them to the ground.
Three other varieties of pepper seeds have also germinated, also going to ground on Thursday, together with Nasturtium (beautiful eatable flowers with peppery leaves) and Marigolds to help us with our un-welcomed critters…
Purslane ( Verdolaga/Portulaca)
Originally from India and the Middle East, considered a “weed”.
Can be eaten as a leaf veggie in salads or cooked like spinach. Also used in soups/stews.
Purslane contains more Omega-3 Fatty Acids than any other leaf vegetable plant! Also Vitamins C and B, Carotenoids & minerals. It’s 2 pigments are very rich in antioxidants.
Magenta Magic Orach
Deepest red of all, makes it a lively addition to any salad! Orach is originally from the Alps, often called Mountain Spinach.
Culinary Hints
An outstanding culinary expert within our group suggests lightly-sauteed mustard greens over pasta…..in a soft olive oil base…hmmm!
PHOTO GALLERY UPDATE LINK:
http://picasaweb.google.com/SilkaBesosa/SIEMBRATRESVIDASAibonitoPuertoRico

The English Rose

During a recent visit to the west coast of Puerto Rico I had breakfast with a friend

at La Rosa Inglesa, a B&B located high up on a hill over Rincon.

La Rosa Inglesa has expansive vistas, nice amenities,

comfortable rooms, very friendly and attentive staff, but it is most famous for its sumptuous breakfasts. Here is their breakfast menu:

Dan had a Full Monty
and I had a breakfast burrito

Both were yummmmy!

Rainy season at a resort

During the break from blogging I went back to the west coast on an unfinished business and stayed briefly at a lovely resort in Anasco, south of Rincon, called Rincon Beach Resort.

The resort has a very nice, wide and uncrowded beach and pleasant amenities: a large pool with a swim up bar and a snack bar nearby, a huge spa, etc. etc.

That's how it is being enjoyed in the rainy season:

Caribbean birthday

I don't think I ever had my birthday party at a beach bar - after all my birthday is in December.

But this year I have been celebrated on my birthday in balmy Puerto Rico, so a beach bar was appropriate - and this particular one - Shipwreck Bar and Grill was perfect! It is fun and colorful during the day and fun and imaginatively illuminated by night, its menu is creative and the food really good. But I am getting ahead of myself fast forwarding to the evening party, while there is still the whole day to be described.

The day started very early, with a 7 am trip to the first secret birthday destination, which turned out to be a snorkeling/diving excursion (by Taino Divers)

to Desecheo Island:

The coral formations there are great. See for yourself:

We stopped at three different sights, one most suitable for divers, the other two for both divers and snorkelers. I was with a couple of friends, one of them an avid diver. He claims he spotted a large nursing shark, but nobody else in the tour group of 12 - 6 divers and 6 snorkelers - seen it. The whole tour was a such a quintessential Caribbean experience: the azure water, corals in all shapes and sizes, balmy weather, international company. We returned to port at 2 pm - after lunch of sandwiches on board and had to scramble to the next secret birthday destination, which turned out to be one of my most favorite places in Rincon: the Secret Garden Art Gallery!

Secret garden has great art by local artists and a fantastic location: a huge tropical, jungle like garden right on one of the beaches (see their video)!

I have visited the galery before, shopped there for a few of Christmas presents and had my eye on a couple of Roberto Ortizs (who runs the gallery) paintings for myself...and today I was going to get one of them as a birthday present. Wow, was I elated! (If you browse through Roberto's paintings on the Secret Garden's web site, you can see it: the painting of a fan like cliffs of Cabo Rojo) .

But we could not linger at the gallery or in the garden this time, since we had to hurry (hurry, hurry!) to a third secret location this day: a sunset whale watching sail with Katharina Sail Charters on a sailing catamaran.

Well, we haven't seen any whales, but the trip was lovely and the sunset amazing - as usual.

Hungry we disembarked and entered the Shipwreck Bar. Their menu is inventive, but we haven't hesitated much ordering our appetizers: mussels in white wine sauce, shrimps won-ton and calamares in a spicy sauce.


We wolfed all this accompanied by a bottle of wine... and discovered that we were completely satisfied with just appetizers. (Their portions are for very young and very hungry surfers). But for the sake of a birthday tradition we order one piece of cake for the three of us and I was reminded that I am not young any more, when my friends started discussing with the waiters how to squeeze the appropriate amount of candles on that piece of cake. Finally, a compromise solution was reached - just one candle! Suits me perfectly.

I would not mind having more fun and active birthday like this. Viva Puerto Rico!

Yet another car, another cat and another dwelling

Uff, it was a busy weekend. Too busy to hang around in a hammock....

During the last week the old car I bought developed a problem and was stopping at changing gears, or just out of the blue and after some frustrating - and even scary - experiences I decided to return it to the friend I bought it from, and she agreed to take it back and suggested refunding all my money, but I insisted she keeps some of them as a payment for my using it for almost a month.

Then I went to a car rental agency, rented a car and went searching for another car to purchase.

First, however, I promised to spend part of the weekend in question with a visiting friend and was showing her all the local beaches from Aquadillla to Anasco, when near the Table Rock beach in Aguada I spotted a large white villa overlooking the beach, that bore a discrete sign of two apartments for rent. The owner was inside so we went exploring.

There was a nice, cool, and very white (white ceramic floors, white walls, white trims, white kitchen cabinets, etc.) two bedroom apartment with an ocean view both from the living/dining room - with a white walled patio - and from the second bedroom/study, while master bedroom overlooked a large tropical garden. This apartment has a private entry gate (white, as you probably guessed it), car parking for more than one car and a private part of a garden. And a washer and dryer is in a nook outside the apartment - just the way I like doing laundry in the tropics - al aire fresco.

I liked this apartment from the start, since - contrary to my experiences in Puerto Rico so far - there was nothing shabby about the place, and the price - for a quiet beachfront location - was far from astronomical. However one advantage of the place - it was unfurnished and thus I could do it exactly the way I liked it - turned out to be a short term disadvantage: it was unfurnished and I have no furniture here, and - with the necessity to buy a car asap - I felt like I could not start furniture hunting - even for a minimalist living - before Christmas, while my current place was rented till December 20, and I wanted to move by then.

I informed the new landlord about the dillemma and we found a solution: they had also a fully furnished and air-conditioned studio on the other side of the villa - yet also with a view of the sea and the beach, and I could rent it now and when I had time to go shopping for furniture I could switch to the two bedroom apartment - unless, of course, somebody else claimed it first. So I decided to take the offer and risk at worst renting the studio till the end of the winter season - or to look elsewhere again, if somebody claimed the larger apartment. So we quickly penned a pre-rental agreement, I paid a security deposit and we continued the tour of beaches.

My friend tried surfing in Rincon with a guide (she is my daughter's age), while I had fun snorkeling - there are coral reefs here and great visibility. We played too long and when we were done, all car dealerships were closed. We went home, where we found that our neighbors were hosting a parranda - a Puerto Rican - more temperamentful - equivalent of Christmas caroling with all kinds of Caribbean music, all kind of instruments, song, dance, food, drink - a loud and rowdy, deliciously fun party to which we were instantly invited.

So we went car hunting on Sunday morning. My visiting friend proved invaluable here, since I know next to nothing about cars, while she could even spot if a part of the car was repainted after an accident and such some - boring yet important - practical things. So after visiting about a dozen of car dealerships on highway 2 between Rincon and Aguada, and her turning up her nose at everything she saw, we narrowed it first to two possibilities and finally settled on a nice looking 2002 Mazda Protege.

I offered to pay with American Express, which has no spending limit, but they did not accept Amex - nor any other credit card - so I - a bit in a culture shock, since I am oerhaps too used to pay by credit or debit cards for everything - finally agreed to give them two checks: one for $1000 to be cashed right away and one for the remainder to be cashed 10 days later, to give me time to sell some shares from my brokerage account ( which I would have done to pay an Amex bill within a month anyway - I do not carry any debt) to my checking account.

I could have gotten financing for the car from the dealer, but learned that it would cost me 18% in annual interest (yes, yes, financing in Puerto Rico is definitively not cheap - and neither are cars) and the average return I get on my stock portfolio ( save for the international part of it, due to dollar being practically in free fall since the beginning of Bushe's and Cheney's Iraq misadventure) is less than 18% a year, thus a no brainer was to sell some stock instead of financing the car - and negotiating a lower car price for a cash deal as an additional sweetener.
(My daughter, however, an MPA and CPA that she is, became so horrified by my check postdating routine that she immediately tranferred the amount in question from her savings to my checking. We have our differences: I keep everything in stock while she keeps about $20000 - $25000 in cash as a buffer. Perhaps wise - and sometimes very convenient I have to admit.)

So, after a purchase agreement was finished and I got my temporary vehicle licence ( the permanent one is supposed to arrive within 30 days), I got my new car to take with me.
I wondered a bit about insurance, but was informed that a basic insurance is included in a sticker that every Puerto Rican car must have on their front windshield - if a police spots an expiring sticker, the car is towed away and the owner/driver fined. I only had to purchase a full coverage insurance separately.

Now, armed with two cars, my friend and I went to the car rental agency to return the rental. And there she spotted a tiny, abandoned kitten, no more than three months old: white and grey, with blue eyes, skinny, hungry for both food and affection. My friend said "hey, kitty, kitty" but the kitten took one glance at her and then one glance at me and...without a slightest hesitation jumped into my arms. Thus I became a "foster mother" of yet another kitty and had to stop at a store, purchase kitten food, litter, box, carrier etc. etc.

Before the nightfall the kitty ate an inordinate amount of food, made a lot of use of her new litter box, groomed herself meticulously and fell asleep on a pillow next to mine.



The local vet is closed today, so tomorrow we go to have her checked out, treated if need be and given all the protective shots a kitty requires.

Amazing results

I checked my blood sugar levels this morning and it was perfect - and I did not take a drop of insulin in 48 hours and only a half of my glucophage dose! In fact, after eating 3 dates equal to about 20 grams of sugar my blood sugar raised no higher than to 120!

Of course my semi fast for 2 1/5 days after my emergency room visit contributed to it undoubtedly, but I already ate a full living food lunch (raw lasagna, rollies, greens, sprouts, kale, tomato dressing) and a gourmet living food dinner last night (vegetarian sushi, raw green soup, raw vegan pizza) at 'Natural High' in Rincon and my results are close to miraculous.

And most of the credit for my diabetes reversal needs - undoubtedly - to go to living foods and Ann Wigmore's Natural Health Institute that propagates and teaches it!

Tuesday at an emergency room

Rebellion - there is always a price to pay for it, isn't there?

I was slightly rebelling yesterday against the institute's blended day: there are three of them every first week of the program to help new program participants cleanse their bodies, and one day the second week. They are appreciated by program participants, but for some staff they can get slightly boring with time, as it did for me yesterday, so I was rebelling: first eating almost nothing the entire day and in the evening going to supper at one of the nearby roadstands. Usually, I was told, the road stands in Puerto Rico offer tasty local fare, but I got yesterday far more than I bargained for : an e-coli, most likely in the spring sallad!

I was sick like a dog all night, so sick, I thought I was going to die. I was unable to leave the bed and thought - wise after the damage - that, especially considering that I live alone - I should have been far better prepared for an emergency. As it were, I was in a new place, and haven't yet recorded any of my new colleague's and new local friend's private phone numbers, so I had nobody to call for help, my apartment was locked from the inside so nobody could get to me without breaking out the door if I was unable to open it myself, and - worse of all - I forgot to place my cell phone on my night stand and for many, many scary hours I could not get up and reach it even to call 911.

I was conscious all that time, save for an awful abdominal pain etc. (I'll best spare you the disgusting details), but when I tried to even sit on my bed , I felt so dizzy, that I could not get up, until finally, many hours later, I managed to sit down, then raise myself to a near standing position and... fell on the closet door. From there, one painfully small step after the other, feeling like on an out of control merry-go-round, hugging the closet, then a wall, I was finally able to reach the bathroom.

Then, on my way back, now a tad more experienced in that - walking the walls - skill, I ventured a long trip to the apartment door, unlocked it, and grabbed my cell phone from the dining room table on the way back to my bed. Then I was too exhausted for a few more hours to use the cell, but when I did, I called my employer, left a message and fell asleep.

In the morning I discovered how caring both my employer and my coworkers were: one of the director's Leola Brooks (called by all here "everybody's favorite grandma") visited me, helped me to check my blood sugar (which was awfully high due to infection) and my blood pressure (which was stratospheric) and suggested gently that I should go to an emergency room immediately.

I agreed and she helped me to get dressed and dispatched a bilingual colleague with me to the emergency room in Rincon. And when I came back from the emergency room I discovered that the institute's housekeeping staff has not only cleaned the mess I made that night, but my entire apartment, and washed and dried my bed linens and towels. Boy, was I grateful.

At the emergency room I was immediately examined by a doctor ( who was informed of my high blood pressure and all other symptoms even before I arrived) and then put in a bed for observation, hooked to an oxygen tank, given a drop, an EKG, taken a battery of blood - and other tests - given a medication and .... realeased after about 5 hours, feeling almost human again. I was instructed to be carefull eating sallads at rodside stands.

The emergency room bill was - perhaps - the biggest shocker: $ 95 for all that! Full price, for the uninsured, since my employee's health insurance has not kicked in, yet.

Can any of you, living in the USA believe that?

There are benefits to be "just" a commonwealth territory, and not a state: efficient, effective and extremely affordable health care for all!

A glorious Sunday

It's such a glorious day: the surf is up, up, the waves crash with strength on the beach and on the rocks, where parts of the beach totally disappear under the waves, when the tide is so high.
All morning I could hear the crashing sound of the waves while doing my laundry (don't you just love doing laundry in the tropics? the washing machines are outdoors, but under a roof - in case it rains - right next to a traditional pila, and nearby are the clothes lines, so alive with colors, after you hang your laundry in the fresh air), and when I finally got to the beach, attempting to do some swimming in a semi protected from the current cove, I was bombarded by coconuts, dislodged by the waves, rolling back and forth, lots of them rolling back and forth and some hitting me. A bit too intense "massage" if you ask me.

The beach is fringed with coconut palms and every day we pick sprouted coconuts from the beach and bring them to the institutes's coconut shed, where one of our macho chefs will open them with a machete ( I ain't brave enough - yet - to use a machete on a coconut myself, although, when I lived in the cloud forest of Costa Rica four years ago, I had my own machete - ha! - and was becoming quite handy at using it... at least in my own opinion... the real pros smiled politely after they stepped back to a safe distance) to get to the spongy texture of a coconut that has sprouted, being exposed to both sun and sea water. Its flesh taste like a cotton candy, only better... and it's good for you, too :-).

It became quite hot in the early afternoon (94 f) so I came to my office for a couple of hours to cool myself (my office has ac, while my apartment does not), intent on blogging, as promised, but instead I spent time reading European Sunday newspapers on Internet, so the description of Ann Wigmore Natural Health Institutes's program will have to wait till next "too hot to stay on the beach" free time, sorry :-(

P.S. Photo courtesy of Coconut Palms Inn in Rincon