Yo Food Fight Friday Peeps!

I’m aware it’s Saturday today and yet I’m dropping a @foodfightfriday post like it’s Friday. In my defense, I’ve been participating in triple F since the beginning, I’ve never missed a week nor have I ever posted late or early, and I had a pretty rough time along side @dandays yesterday. At the risk of getting fish slapped I’m dropping my triple F contender on a Saturday. Shhhh 🤫… maybe no one will notice.

I woke up this morning feeling good. The inconvenience of yesterday is gone and today is anew. I have some authentic Italian gravy on the stove, it’s been simmering all afternoon, and I’m about to get started on a yeast free focaccia bread, life is good. I suppose with all the crap from this week and the emotions that go along with it, spaghetti night sounded most appropriate for din din.

No, I’m not sharing my ultimate spaghetti and focaccia with you food fight peeps- no sir(y)… uh huh… nope, not this time but I am sharing something… check it out:

… meet Zaria! She’s a French nomad who roams around from continent to continent cutting hair on the beach and making jewelry. She is rad.

Dandays and I had the pleasure of crossing paths with her while coming out of a pretty hip spot in Uvita, Costa Rica. She was coming from the beach and we wanted to know how far of a walk it would be to get there, she was the first person we saw to ask.

Once her and I started talking we couldn’t stop. Dandays even went to the car to do some things leaving Zaria and I to chatter box about EVERYTHING… haha

Apparently, she has spent time in SouthEast Asia as well as Central and South America just living life and giving haircuts on the beach. Dope, right?!? The banner she’s holding up is a scroll she whipped out from her bag when telling me what she does. Not that I asked her, Dandays and I really never care what anyone does for their profession. She volunteered the info while simultaneously reaching for the dopest business card we’ve ever seen. We had to get a picture and she was happy to oblige. Anyway, people like Zaria are interesting, free, open, and our kind of people. Totally digging on Zaria.

Now, back to where we were walking out of… first let me show you what we were gobbling up the night before. Granted, I had to do a lot of the grunt work for the meal so you’d think it would taste sweeter from all of my efforts but it ended up being just 🤷🏼‍♀️ Meh:

Don’t you know I’m on a world falafel tour, seeking out the best tasting falafel on the planet? Well, I had mentioned that to our Air B and B host, who is a self proclaimed Falafel Chef, and she insisted we have a falafel night down at the docks. Initially I was stoked but then it became evident that she wanted ME to make the falafel, and not only that but to do it with her directing my every move, each spice, every fart I was to make- it was a disaster 🤦🏼‍♀️ Did I I tell you that she admitted to never having made falafel before though, so when she continued correcting my spice choices I knew I was learning from a pro (not directed to the reader but rather an accurate reflection of what my internal dialogue was chanting while I continued to process the chickpeas like a good sous chef). Oh yeah, I almost forgot, our falafel turned into a falafel catering job when I found out mid mixing that we would be feeding 14-15 people that night… WTF?!?

I hurried out of there at noon (I had gotten over there to cook/prep at 9:00 per our hosts request) and told Dandays “I’m never cooking anything with that chick again”. He slightly laughed but then seemed more annoyed than I was so I quickly went into damage control mode. Needless to say we weren’t excited about returning for the actual eating part of the party. I got a picture of the fixings table and that’s about it. Haha… the falafel wasn’t that good but I was hungry and for all of my efforts I was going to enjoy some falafel dang it.

We ate and bounced and I mixed up a little impromptu nice cream when we got home as reward for our good behavior :) 😋. So frikken good!

At the party we were informed that our water would be shut off the next day from 9 in the morning to God knows when. Dandays and I decided to get out of town for the day in that case and hit up a beach a couple hours away. Little did we know what awaited us in that desolate beach town.

I found a joint through trip advisor that made falafel and many other vegan dishes. We set our GPS to the lunch spot and took off 2 plus hours up the coast.

Walking in we immediately realize we are at a hostel and a dope hostel at that. They offered a ton of activities, surfing, body boarding, yoga, Pilates, food, drinks, smoothies, and WiFi. Not to mention beds and laundry… we both headed straight for the bathrooms…

No problema- I’ll pee on someone’s pee and let my pee be- no problema! We washed our hands at the community sinks and dried them in my Costa Rica curls. Every day is good hair day in the humid part of southern CR 🥶.

Next up was locating a menu and getting our order on because now I’m getting pret-tea hungry.

Dandays found a lifeline while waiting for our food… you see that too, right?! It was a beautiful find for my loud ass, grumpy tummy. #winning (is hash tagging cute phrases still a thing?)- yep, that’s the communal kitchen you see.

Check out Anna Edey leaving her heart behind at the Costa Rican hostel. Pretty deep stuff here.

Just getting a lay of the land while we wait for food. I caught him in his natural habitat foraging for his next meal. Shhhh, be very quiet as not to spook him…

Oh yeah, mission successful ✅. I made a couple laps around the place to get a few more pics…

What? You don’t have chickens wondering around your local falafel joint?

This was the penthouse of the hostel… and finally our food has arrived…

… or Dandays food has arrived but I’m able to nibble on fries until my plate gets here… #winning (too much…? )

I don’t know what they made this falafel out of (it kind of tasted like franks red hot, which I love, so, winning) but it wasn’t bad. Those big ol potato wedge things you see there are actually deep fried yucca fries- pretty good but I’m a sucker for a good French fry. All in all lunch was adequate. Still not a falafel win but definitely not a falafel lose either. I’ll take it.

Next stop, the bench in front of us…

With our backs against the “No wet butts” sign we kicked our feet up and enjoyed the free WiFi for a bit.

Dandays got those new nifty water shoes in Panama the other day- another WIN! I should have gotten some new shoes too because my flops are pretty hammered… next time I spose (that’s “suppose” for the creatively challenged folk).

And then we spotted our first speckled exotic bird…

Ch… ch… ch… ch… ch… chia chickens or hens 🤓…

Isn’t she purdy? And fat? She’s pretty fat in my opinion but what do I know 🤷🏼‍♀️

After about an hour or so just chillen we were going to order another Pepsi for the Mr. and a vegan ice cream for the Pura but decided against it last second. Instead we wanted to make our way to the beach so we grabbed our things and trekked along. That’s when I met Zaria (see above, Turd who failed to read the beginning of my post) 😉.

A couple unpleasant attempts to see Uvitas Beach was enough to abort mission and make our way to a beach we knew we could hang at, Playa Hermosa. Did you know every other beach along the coast of Costa Rica is known as Playa Hermosa? Okay, maybe not every other beach but there’s at least a few too many called Playa Hermosa 🤦🏼‍♀️ It can be confusing to the untrained tourist. Good thing we’ve been here for a few months so you know we know everything there is to know about these beaches… ::wink:: ::wink::

After enduring the rain and lack of sunshine for a couple hours we finally called it quits. I shook my sarong out on what I thought was the opposite direction of the wind and by mistake took a mouthful of sand to the mouth. Remnants stuck to my freshly rain drop slicked arms as well. I may have whined a tad (insert smallest space between your thumb and pointer finger here) but Dandays put a stop to that immediately 🤷🏼‍♀️.

Now, it’s around 3:30 and it’s going to take us at least 2 hours to get home but not before we get a little grocery shopping in. You see where we are staying isn’t the friendliest to tourists and I’d rather not have to step foot in the local grocery store if I don’t have to. Uvita grocery market, here we come…

By the way, this market had vegan stuff, gluten free stuff, lots of good looking produce and ice cream, vegan frikken ice cream… I was a happy girl, but oh wait… the place across the street says…

… Gelato ‘100% natural ingredients’, in Spanish of course. I bet they have some vegan flavors…

I know you spotted that dark chocolate vegan flavor… it was on 😋. I’ll take two ✌️ scoops please. Don’t judge, it’s been awhile since I’ve had ice cream (over 7 months).

That’s not blurry it’s just the ice cream sweating from all of the humidity 😉.

I couldn’t pass up this vegan, gluten free, organic, local Costa Rican dark mint chocolate either. I know, I’m really doing a great job on my NO sugar diet 🤦🏼‍♀️.

Do you see the wooden spoon? Now imagen eating a fudgesicle for your first time ever, in over 100 degree weather, with zero guilt, like a kid… that was me, that was how I felt snorting those two scoops of dark chocolate vegan ice cream. Did I just say I snorted it? Clearing throat, I didn’t snort it, I ate it slowly and elegantly (not dripping any on my chin at all) like a lady.
The chocolate bar is for later…

See? Vegan… local… gluten free… basically a salad. It sits in my refrigerator as we speak awaiting its destiny. I was actually thinking about making a treat with it. Maybe a chocolate chip cookie of some sort. I haven’t ironed out the details but I’ll keep y’all posted.

Thanks for hanging out with me today and please, keep the fish slapping to minimum @jlsplatts, it’s been a rough week 🤷🏼‍♀️.

Happy Food Fight my Foodie Freaks. Hold up, I’m coming right over to check out your goods…

Pura Vida ✌️