Food demo #1 at Finca de Vida

At our stay at Finca de Vida we wanted to get inspiration for healthy cooking and booked two raw food demos with Itzel and Stephan. Demo # 1 was a raw bread, salad and banana ice cream!

Raw bread sandwich (needs a dehydrator)
Example ingredients to make raw bread:
1 cup flax seeds (make powder in ex. Vitamix)
1 cup chia seeds (make powder)
1 cup almonds (make powder)
1 cup big oats (make powder or keep them whole)
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
Mix everything in a bowl

4 large tomatoes (the tomatoes in Costa rica are two to three times the size of tomatoes in Norway) - cut the tomatoes in pieces and put in blender
3-4 celery sticks - cut in pieces and put in blender
4 avocadoes (if you want to make a sweet bread, you can replace the avocado with banana) - put in blender
20 cloves of garlic - put in blender
A large handful of fresh rosemary - put in blender
A small handful of fresh oregano - put in blender
1 tablespoon salt (maybe you want to use less!) - put in blender
Mix everything in a blender/Vitamix

Pour the liquid mix little by little in the bowl with the dry and mix well. If you have too much of the liquid, save it to make sandwich spread!
Spread the dough in a 0,5 cm thick layer on your dehydrator sheets/plates. Let it dry over night.
Divide into sandwich size pieces.

Sandwich spread
Use the liquid rests from making the bread (if you have any)
Add 1 avocado
Mustard seeds
Salt
Juice from 1/2 lime
Put everything in the blender and mix.


Sandwich filling
Start with a piece of bread and add the avocado spread. Add:
Thin slices of tomatoes
Thin slices of red beets
Thin slices of zucchini
Thin slices of apple
Thin slices of cucumber
Thin sticks of red bell pepper
Grated carrot
Fresh dill, parsley or coriander
A piece of lettuce on top, or if you want more bread, another slice of bread (we liked it best with only lettuce on top!)

Salad

1 to 1 1/2 mango (diced in small pieces)

4 tomatoes (diced in small pieces)

onion (minced)

coriander (minced)

lime juice

you can also add more greens (lettuce, spinach, kale) in tiny pieces

Tip:

Use a small bowl to place the salad on the plate

Slice a red beet in small sticks and use for decoration

Banana ice cream!

7 frozen bananas (divide in 2-3 pieces and put in blender)

1 tsp vanilla extract or seed from a vanilla "stick"

2 tsp cinnamon

Mix everything in the blender

Add to serving bowls.

Strawberry sauce

1 bowl strawberries

2 1/2 tbs honey

Mix in blender

Decorate the ice cream with the sauce

Use diced mango, blueberries ++ as decoration

We loved it, and Maria and Aurora made banana ice cream for the Christmas pot luck :)

- Line

Farm of Life!

This has been a difficult post to write. Not because there is nothing to write about, but because we had such a good time at Finca de Vida/Farm of Life, and it´s hard to describe it with words. But I´ll try!

We got a beautiful room with a big bathroom,
a gorgeous view and a hammock!

We booked our stay at Finca de Vida after Thommy showed me a Youtube video where John from okraw.com had visited Finca de Vida. We decided that that´s where we wanted to spend Christmas, sent an email to ask if they had a room for us for 5 nights and jumped with excitement when we got the positive reply from one of the owners, Jody!

We arrived in the afternoon after taking a taxi from Quepos to Dominical (50 USD) and then another taxi, that Jody booked for us from Dominical to Finca de Vida near San Salvador (40 USD). Jody´s husband, Brian picked us up and drove the last 2-3 km to the farm (4WD is a must).

The girl´s favorite: Banana Villa!

Brian showed us around the big farm (37 acres), enthusiastically giving us samples to taste from fruits, herbs and leaves from different edible shrubs and encouraging us to go out and pick our food while we were there.

On our first night the Calvis (Brian and Jody) and their volunteers Itzel and Stephan made a bonfire and we sat there talking and planning the next days. Sunday was supposedly a good day for a tour to Nauyaca waterfalls, because there are no other tours there, which means less people. We decided to go there with Brian as our tour guide the next day.

Perfect for swimming on a hot day.

The Nauyaca waterfalls were beautiful, we went swimming in fresh, cool water and the only other people we met were Eric, a neighbour of the Finca, with his two volunteers. The brave and strong made it over to the waterfall and got a water massage/shower as a reward, while the children and their mom stayed closer to the rocks on the other side. But everyone went swimming!

The next day was Christmas Eve, and the girls really wanted to go horseback riding, which Jody and Brian booked with another neighbour, Linda. So we got up early to ride about 1 hour to a small waterfall nearby and back again. The girls loved it and I enjoyed it too. But I have to say that I´m glad we didn´t stay longer on the horses, because my body was hurting...

For Christmas Eve, some of the Calvis´ neighbours were invited with all the Finca´s guests to a potluck dinner at the Finca! Oh, the anticipation in the air when the chopping, blending and cooking was going on in the Harvest House (communal kitchen)! We had sweet soup, vegetable soup, different salads, stuffed red bell peppers, bean hummus, red beet hummus, sweet mashed potatoes, apple pie, pumpkin pie, raw chocolate and for final dessert banana ice cream with mango sauce!

On Christmas Day a big group of us went on a hike to the Diamante waterfalls. The hike started with steep climbing up to a nice garden, where we had a chance to taste the fruits and plants that grew there. We tasted cacao fruit (delicious), suger cane, a really strong mustard leaf, chili peppers and sweet lime. After this nice break in the gardens, the hike continued up to the waterfalls. We had a chance to jump in (7 m jump), swim and look at the stunning waterfalls from different levels. We also met an American family that were going to spend the night in the caves behind the waterfalls. Exciting!

Sunset view from the Harvest House.

We spent our last day just relaxing at the Finca. We tried the cool pools and had a final raw food demo with Itzel and Stephan. The girls were sad because we were leaving the next day, and so was Thommy and I. The atmosphere at the farm was warm, fun and friendly and the people who were there at the same time as us were such great people. It felt like being at a really healthy summer camp, and who wants to leave summer camp!?! But we had only booked 5 nights, and if we had known what a great place Finca de Vida is, we would have booked a longer stay!

- Line