Coffee Course 2020 - Trip to Costa Rica: Foods

I have started co-teaching a course on coffee. This is an interdisciplinary course and the other professor teaches some history of Costa Rica and Latin America as well as the economics of coffee. I teach the biology of coffee but narrowly (e.g., the parts of the coffee cherry = bean + surrounding fruit) and broadly (e.g., tropical climates, soil, photosynthesis). As part of the course, we go to the Tarrazu region of Costa Rica, which is southwest of San Jose. I wanted to make a post about the foods there - all of which were fresh from markets (at least the food we ate). We stopped at a market in Cartago and it was glorious! 

You like beans? We got beans. All kinds! Sold by the kilo. 

Edge of the Cartago market. Every inch of these markets are used. 

             

Chayote root. Apparently delicious and expensive. This was at a roadside vendor near a chayore farm. I assume chayote is perennial so the vine (not shown) would regrow from the root. Given the fruit (below) are valuable the roots must be even more valuable. So I wonder if the plants has lower production after a number of years and that's when the root can be sacrificed. Question for the next trip. 

Cayote fruits. We ate them in a salad (not shown) but apparently they're very flexible and can be eaten like tomatoes (raw, steamed, fried, pickled, etc) 

   

An edible palm fruit, the pejibaye. This we had buttered and steamed and I loved it. Starchy like yucca. 

Lots of chayote to be found

Fish, chayote, salad, rice, and black beans - standard fare of Costa Rica. No hot sauce is typically used.

I can't remember the name but I think this was in the genus Inga. I believe this to be a large bean pod of a plant in the Fabaceae (bean family). The white part is the edible part and is very sweet. 

This looks like passionfruit but I believe it's just related to it. Grows on a vine (below) and it eaten green (unlike passionfuit, which is yellow) 

Sausage, chicken, nachos = goodness

Cas, very popular in juices. Very tart. 

This and below. No idea. Sweet and delicious. 

Gallos en hoja de platano. This was made special for us by our caterer but this is considered field food. It is a meal by itself: potatoes, beans, sausage, and two corn tortillas that are fitted like a pita. 

Boiled down sugar cane juice and poured them into molds to make a candy. This guy had several acres of coffee and sugar cane that he purchased after working at a diner in New Jersey for four years. I kid you not.

Cashew. Yep. That curly thing at the bottom contains the nut.