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i don’t know HOW they would chlorinate our water supply since it comes from a spring on the side of a mountain and is piped in. there is no reservoir. i would be one unhappy puppy if these messed with my water.
Hey 2bncr — thanks for your approval! that means a lot to me. i used to teach cooking classes, bread making class, and pastry classes. i’ve also done some commando-style kitchen clean-outs where i go into a persons house and tell them about all the poisons in their food, then dump it all in trash bags, and take them to the store and teach them how to shop. it’s a big job, as so many people just are clueless. good, healthy food does not have to be complicated. and we used to have those kinds of dinners where everyone participated in making it and learning about the healthy qualities of the food we were preparing. you are what you eat — it’s just that simple, and so many people have health problems that could be mitigated if they cut out the sugar, bad fats, and junk food in general. if i only had a clone of myself, or an extra 5 – 10 hours in a day, i could get something together here. maybe next year. vamos a ver.
and just this morning i scanned the headlines about the bribery case that allowed Alcatel to get a foothold in this country. that’s just one incident; there are probably hundreds more that we never hear about — the little bags of cash left on a doorstep in the middle of the night. jajaja
still better than the table salt they sell here that is adulterated with the two things i don’t want to consume — fluoride and iiodine, unless they are naturally-occurring.
my information is as recent as 10 days ago when i had a meeting with the private institution that maintains our cuenca. NO CHLORINE! NO FLUORIDE! Yaaaaaa.
The water providers are PURE EVIL!! You do not want them anywhere near your water supply. I live where I do in costa rica because my water comes from a pristine cuenca, the water is untreated — no chlorine, no fluoride — straight out of a mountain. before you praise these water providers, i suggest you watch this: http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/flow_for_love_of_water/
you will never think about water the same way again.
well, well, well — will wonders never cease????
oh, david, did you really ever once agree with me? I must’ve missed that post. we must have been talking about the weather or something really innocuous. jajaja
i buy La Serenita brand sea salt — it has no added fluoride or yoda. or, i buy pink himalayan salt. i would never ever use that stuff in the stores with the blue top. that is table salt with both fluoride AND yoda. and some sea salts have it added, too. you have to read the labels.
we eat fish about 2x’s a month, shrimp once a month, chicken once or twice a month. i’ve never used a bread machine so i have no clue how one would even do that. i do all my breads by hand, the old fashioned way.
the key here is COMMERCIAL MILK — from factory cows, raised in unsanitary conditions, knee-deep in cow shit, with mastitis in their udders that drip pus into the milk. THAT is why it has to be pasteurized. RAW MILK is a whole other animal! (JAJAJA) I agree sometimes with Mike Adams, but he’s not always right. I only use milk to make kefir and yogurt and that changes the entire structure of the milk. Sometimes i put it in my espresso to make iced cappuccino and my husband uses it in his morning coffee. If you put a gun to my head i wouldn’t drink commerical milk or eat anything that had been raised in one of those ghastly factory farms.
The $200-225 a month we spend on food also includes those things such as sugar, flour, cafe, etc.
The safety of pasteurized milk is overrated. I haven’t consumed anything but raw milk for the last 30 years and i have never gotten sick. Don’t believe the FDA about everything. Pasteurized milk isn’t that good for you since any reason you would drink it has been destroyed by the process. Raw milk is loaded with vit A, D, and CLA. and it has also been known to cure allergies and indigestion problems that are caused by drinking an unnatural product like homogenized/pasteurized milk. we use whole milk — the kind that has 6″ of heavy cream floating on the top of the 3 liter bottle.
as of now, you cannot renew your DL at the bank. that is only for costa rican nationals.
i did not have to go to Paso Ancho to change my numbers, although i know many people who did. they did all the changing at the MOPT office i went to. this is one instance where sweet-talking the officials in Spanish really pays off.
The way in which Wally World operates would certainly make one think that it would not be out of their usual business practices to pay bribes in Costa Rica, just as it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for some gummint official to take one. Latin America operates on this system. It’s NORMAL! It’s how it’s always been and how it’s always going to be. But wait — it’s how it is in Italy, Spain, Dubai, AND the US. Bribes: It’s what makes the world go ’round.
Money-saving tips from the Food Fascist:
Stop buying packaged food. That means no cookies, cakes, chips, crackers, soda, ice cream, pasta sauce, orange juice, sugared cereals, or anything that is not in its original, true form.
Stop shopping in the grocery stores and start shopping at the farmer’s markets. Don’t buy paper towels, aluminum foil, or plastic zip-lock bags. Re-use plastic bags that veggies come in for other purposes. Compost all your veggie scraps. Burn all your paper. Recycle or re-use all glass containers. Then you won’t have to buy the expensive 50-gallon trash bags.
Give up meat. Switch to a veggie-based, whole grain and legume diet. It will save you money and save your life.
Make your own bread and yogurt. All bread and yogurt here have HFCS, sugar, or preservatives.
Buy your milk and butter from a local farmer – it’s cheaper and it’s not pasteurized.
Give up gringo food that has been imported. Learn to love local cheeses. Buy fresh oranges from the feria or plant some orange trees.
Plant a small garden – grow your own herbs, lettuce, hot peppers, etc. We spend about $50 a week for everything we consume and that includes fresh meat/chicken for the dogs, fish or shrimp for us, olive oil, coconut oil, butter, etc., rice, beans, legumes, whole grains, pasta, plus all the veggies and fruit we consume.
Stop eating out. The restaurant food isn’t that great here anyway. Soda food is mediocre at best. Learn to cook what you like at home.
You’re retired; you have plenty of time and the internet has recipes for everything under the sun.
Last week at the feria I spent $33 and this is what I got.
1 kilo of organic strawberries, 2 avocados, 1 bunch of basil, 1 kilo of shucked corn, 3 large tomatoes, 1 papaya, 5 big sweet pottoes, 2 k regular potatoes, 1 cauliflower, 1/2k green beans, 1 bunch of criollo garlic, 4 plantains, 10 carrots, 10 bananas, 3 liters of fresh raw milk, two fish filets, 4 boneless chick thighs, livers, and gizzards (chix for the dogs; fish for us!).
That was all I spent on food for last week — $33.00 – and we eat really really well.
Put your water heater on a timer. Ours is on for 1 hour in the morning, and 1 hour in the afternoon. We have plenty of hot water. Our lights are on timers, too. ICE runs us about $64 a month, a little less or more depending on how much I use the dehumidifier.
We don’t have cable TV – biggest waste of money in my mind. Hubby gets local channels on his little TV – not a problem for him because he speaks fluent Spanish.
We have a small garden behind the house where I have 2 kinds of parsley, chives, lettuce, arugula, turmeric, ginger, spinach, and hot peppers.
We have fruit trees for lemons, limes, oranges, mandarins, clementines, bananas. The citrus trees produce all year it seems, the bananas not so much. I probably don’t save more than $5.00 – $10 a month NOT buying those things, but if your mission is to save money then every little bit counts. And this is how we live on under $1000 a month.
Money isn’t the issue for us – I am very conservative (some might call me cheap – hahaha), or frugal, and have been all my life. We actually save more than we spend every month. So when i hear that people spend $500 – $700 a month on food, I cringe because I can’t even imagine eating what they eat!
And the added benefit is that we are totally healthy — no problems whatsoever, so no money to spend on meds, etc.
and guess what, kids? at one time even i was a moderator.
i think it’s good to discuss politics as it pertains to costa rica AND how the politics in the States affect what happens here. if you think it doesn’t, then i can’t help you. so many people move here and haven’t even a scintilla of a clue about the political system in costa rica, why it does what it does, and why gringos bitching about it is never going to change one little thing. no, costa rica is NOT like the US, thank goodness except that we have obamacare!!! jajaja
As for religion, well, this IS a catholic country and that drives a lot of attitudes and thought processes and dictates social mores. it’s good to have an understanding of these things BEFORE you move here and try to change it.
