Last Monday we attended and I participated in the 2nd Annual Rincón Hot Sauce Contest. It was a pretty rainy day, but cleared up quite a bit toward the evening. I competed with a mango-jalapeño sauce that was somewhat similar to my award winning sauce, Hot Kiss, from last year. I gathered and used the mangos that continue to grow and fall from the huge tree above our cabana.
Some mangos and jalapeños
I also made another cute label. This time the sauce was called Mango Jalapeño Tango.
Britton says they were “salsa” dancing 🙂
Considering the rain and cooler weather there was a pretty decent turnout. We had fun trying all the different salsas. Of course there were some that were just too hot for my taste and took a whole can of beer to wash the burning sensation away!
Set up at the Rincón Balneario
¡Cuidado!
We hung out for quite a while. We even saw our neighbor and his uncle hanging out at the Balneario bar. I had him come over to the event and I think he regretted it. His face turned bright red after eating the burning peanuts. I tried to warn him to only have one peanut but he ate about 3! Pobrecito!
Our neighbor José on the far right turned the color of Britton’s shirt after eating the pique.
Later that evening the psychedelic/rock punk band Blacks en Tela played live and we enjoyed hanging out and hula hooping. About half-way through they tallied all the votes and announced the winners. I won 1st place for best label art and 3rd place for best flavor overall! Not too shabby! (You can find a full list of the winners at this page.)
Jamie, Trina and I were three of the winners and we won these great tie-died shirts
It was also the evening of the summer solstice and we saw a beautiful sunset before the full moon. Overall a fun, fantastic evening. Thanks Frances and Greg for all your hard work in putting this together!
Our life is so fun. While we get a lot of work done, mostly we act like kids. Here’s an example of a 24 or so hour day in our life.
About 6pm we show up to band practice. In the area where we park there is a random old dilapidated boat sitting in the yard. So I climb in and Britton takes some pictures.
We have a fun Friday night jam. Lots of laughs, groovy music and beer.
Chris, Markus and Britton getting goofy in the jam space
Around 11pm we arrive home and quickly fall asleep to the sounds of the coquis, bugs and thunder in the distance.
About 8am we wake up, have some coffee, a cookie, fruit and some eggs and check on the birds. We walk around the property a bit. The power goes out for a couple of hours, but no big deal; we’re leaving anyway. We put on our swimsuits and stop by Mark’s to borrow a tool on our way to the beach. It’s time to celebrate International Surfing Day and the Surfrider Association is having a small bbq fundraiser/gathering at Dome’s Beach! Surfrider is a great organization and has done a lot for Rincón particularly and Puerto Rico as a whole.
Nice and sunny to start
Our friend Steve and Britton along with others enjoying the bbq
The clouds roll in and it starts to rain. Time to go home and take a siesta. Around 3pm our friend Papo calls and says he’s nearby. Would we like to hang out? Sure. We drive to Aguada and meet him for a beer. What should we do? How about bowling? ¡Boliche! I haven’t been bowling in 5 years probably, but Papo had NEVER been. Wow!
So we head out to the bolera on Highway 2. What a funny sight. At least 80% of the lanes have the rubber gutters in use and people just drop the balls loudly with a thud and let the balls zig zag bouncing against the gutters. It seems pretty obvious that bowling is not a very serious sport for most Puerto Ricans! The Dude would not approve. -Haha!
Aguadilla Bolera
At the bowling alley we used our funny nicknames
We had to teach Papo the very basics of bowling. He didn’t quite get the form, and it was actually pretty comical but he is super strong and still managed to get a couple of strikes. I learned new vocabulary here as well. Chuza is strike and pins are pinos! Still not quite sure of the Spanish word for “spare.”
At one point a pino got knocked into the lane. Well it seemed that nothing was standard bowling protocol here…so why not take a walk on the wild side! I had never “crossed the line” so this was my chance. It was a weird feeling to walk down the bowling lane (pista I think it was called).
I had to walk carefully not to slip, but it was kind of cool to do. So, Papo had his first time ever going bowling and I had my first time ever beyond the foul line. Ha!
Later that evening we grabbed a bite to eat. We had plantain pizza, a burrito and mofongo. Where? It’s a bird! It’s a banana! No, it’s Platano Supreme!
Does this look a little weird to you?haha
Life’s ever the adventure. We are still often surprised at the places it takes us. And we’re loving all of it.
It’s summertime and that means things are slow and hot. There are often afternoon rains and everything is super green and beautiful. Lots of fruits are ripe and the flowers are in their showiest state. We also have a few new additions to the farm.
Mail arrival of some new chicks
The chickens and turkeys are doing a pretty good job at reproducing, but we wanted to add in some new genetics to the mix. We shared the order with some friends who are new to chickens and it’s been fun to watch them enjoy chickens for the first time. They are just so super cute when they are recently hatched. Pretty amazing that a little more than 21 days before, they were just eggs! What life energy!
Three of 12 new additions!
We love to eat eggs around here and there is also quite a demand for local, pasture raised chicken eggs. So we thought we would put more of a focus on that side of the homestead.
The rain this time of year can also mean power or water outages. One afternoon the water, electricity and internet went out for about 3 hours. So we decided to go out and have a beer and watch the sunset. Reminds you not to worry so much. Worrying about infrastructure and thinking you could surely do it better than it currently is handled is a classic sign you are still stuck in the old Type A mindset filled with watches, schedules and to-do lists. When you are here things go much smoother if you just go with the island flow. Do what you can, let your voice be heard but don’t worry; they’re working on it. It’s just a little harder on a very mountainous island with limited resources, high heat and a more even work/rest balance.
Enjoying a gorgeous sunset at the balneario in Aguada
When these services go out, it’s a reminder that it’s all man-made. They certainly make life more comfortable. It’s pretty darn hot without even a fan blowing on you. But having them go out reminds you that you should probably have a backup water and electric plan and it definitely helps you appreciate them more than when they are just a given.
We have also been having some really great summer jam sessions with the band. It’s so laid back and chill and we’ve been making some really cool grooves. We jam with new people sometimes that just pop in. Our jam space at Mark’s is very unique. We even made a song called Jam Space, and as you can see in this picture below, Mark’s wife, Robin, made an awesome record for the wall of the song. ~~When the lights go down, you can hear the sounds, of eerie moves and funky grooves. It’s a rather magic place, that we call our jam space.~~
Such a cool jam space and crew of people
The finca is doing well. Summer is the most fruitful season of all. More and more fruits are coming on board. We recently harvested our first corazón fruit (annona reticulata). Very interesting! Semi-sweet with a grainy pear like custard consistency. I’ve read that it is related to guanabana or soursop which makes sense because it looks similar inside. At first it is so weird we didn’t want to eat it, but once we started we just couldn’t stop. Such a Willy Wonka world of fruit here! We’ve found that like children your first inclination is to not like something, but the more exposures you have to a certain food the more you begin to like it and then eventually love it. I would say corazón will soon be a favorite of ours the more we have it.
Corazón does sort of look like a heart – whole and half eaten
When we are out working on the farm we have to watch out to not step on iguanas! They are so fearless of humans, sometimes we see them AFTER we have stepped on their tails and they run off! I know they have become invasive pests of the island, but it still gets me every time that we basically have fricken dinosaurs just roaming free everywhere! Not to mention an easy source of clean meat if it came down to it!
Iguanas are still out en force! Our finca is an uncaged zoo of them really!
It was also recently the primary election season here in Puerto Rico. Mostly it was related to senate and mayoral races, though people can vote in the primaries for the US. Too bad we can’t actually vote in the generals though! There were major caravanas (groups of cars with lights and speakers) and you wouldn’t want to accidently get stuck behind one of them or your plans for the day will include a caravan party for a few hours! A different sort of summer jam!
Elections mean posters, murals and speaker trucks of the candidate
Though Zika messaging is getting out, it doesn’t seem to really have changed anyone’s behavior that I have noticed. I thought this billboard in Mayaguez was kind of funny and misleading. Do you want Sex without Zika? Such a funny question in and of itself. Yes, the Zika virus can spread through sex, but no, they don’t put mosquito repellent in condoms!
Do you want sex without Zika? A lot of funny assumptions in this question
We are currently working on the water hook-ups for the cabin. Britton dug a trench and placed water line from the turkey coop all the way to the cabin. He is now working on the copper interior water lines.
Water line connects at the turkey coop and travels 300 feet to the cabin
It’s summertime and the living is easy. It’s a nice pace. Not many people on the road. Most everyone who is here is here because they want to be. Full-timers. There are some tourists, but they are mainly from other parts of the island and so there is less confusion and hiccups. There are events like the caminata of some guy to raise money for a children’s hospital and the Rincón Triathlon and of course the hot sauce contest coming up. And the flamboyans are majestically fantastic. Summer in Puerto Rico is a special time.
I remember when we were back in Greeley, Colorado. We tried to replicate what we imagined our life would be like in Puerto Rico. We were both so excited about all the cool things we could do when we lived there. We had indoor coffee plants, mini citrus trees, even a banana tree in our living room! I looked for anything with Puerto Rico in it. Read lots and lots of books, blogs, articles, etc. We even had chickens against all convention and with a big fight because we knew we could have as many animals as we wanted when we were outside of the rigidity, rules and conformity of the states.
Seems pretty funny now…our Colorado indoor banana tree
We also tried cooking some Puerto Rican food. And it was an absolute failure. Not only is Puerto Rican food extremely difficult to find in Colorado (the closest thing I found was a Cuban restaurant in Denver), but even the raw ingredients were horrible! We could do rice and beans but beyond that, it was a complete loss. There are no breadfruits or traditional viandas in Colorado grocery stores, coconuts were basically rotten and we had absolutely no idea how to cook plantains. A good reminder to eat local-wherever you are! I remember one plantain we tried cooking. We couldn’t even get the skin off it. We didn’t know how long to cook it and so when we finally tried it, we were like…how did anyone think that eating these was a good idea?!
Our bananas growing now (outside)
So I suppose it’s a good sign when plantains (and breadfruit and papaya and avocados and bananas and mangos) straight from your tree become part of your daily fare. I wasn’t exactly taught how to cook with these things like a parent might to a child and I definitely would like to learn some traditional techniques, but when it is all around you, you learn quickly. Here is a video of a typical breakfast. Nearly all straight from our land.
Plantains (platanos) grow and look much like bananas (guineos), but they are considered a starch or main food group rather than a snack or dessert. Here they make all sorts of things with plantains such as tostones, amarillos, mofongo, empanadillas and many others. I stick with lightly pan fried amarillos. Amarillo means yellow and so unlike most other dishes which use the green plantains, I wait until they are yellow to cook them. They cook fast and don’t need to be double fried like some of the others.
This is still very basic cooking. For one thing, we only have one single burner. And another is I don’t know exactly how to cook some of the “fancy” things like mofongo, though I love to eat it! Con tiempo, con tiempo. It was fun preparing for our move, but there is really nothing like the real thing when you fully embrace it.
Mofongo relleno y Malta -something I never ate in Colorado but can enjoy any time here!
Growing, eating and cooking with plantains means we are adapting. Evolving. Becoming more Puerto Rican. And it is cool because plantains also have a cultural significance. La mancha de plátano or the stain of the plantain is considered a symbol of pride for the jíbaro, the Puerto Rican country farmer, who when cutting down bananas and plantains would invariably get banana sap on their clothing. This stain is nearly impossible to remove, like the love for the country itself.
Plantain stain on a towel that we set plantains and bananas on after harvesting them
La Mancha de Plátano Luis Lloréns Torres (Translated by me)
Mata de platano, a tí, a tí te debo la mancha que ni el jabón, ni la plancha quitan de encima de mí desque jíbaro nací al aire llevo el tesoro de tu racimo de oro y tu hoja verde y ancha; Llevaré siempre la mancha por secula seculorum.
Plantain tree, to you, To you I owe the stain That neither soap nor the iron Can take away from me Since I was born a jíbaro To the air I bring the treasure Of your golden corm
and your green and wide leaf; With me I will always carry the stain For ever and eternity.
