Star Fruit Tree

IN the states, my diet was pretty abhorrent. I didn’t know how to cook (starin to learn down here…STARTin), but wasn’t well-off enough to afford to eat out three times a day. Therefore, my sporadic meals usually consisted of standing in front of my open refrigerator for five minutes whist stuffing various processed carbs and liquids down my throat. Afterwards, the inevitable heartburn, belching (sorry Omar) & exhaustion.

The meals at my farm are quite different. I eat at regular times (6:30, 12:30 & 6:30 in the PM) and the food is organic in a way that puts the health-food nuts of New Paltz to shame. The meals are simple and unspiced. At every meal there are heaping mounds of rice and beans, as well as some sort of vegetable soup. The other dishes usually consist of potatoes, Yucca, cabbage, green bananas, eggs and corn. They aren’t like, DELICIOUS or anything, but I’ve recently realized that the quality of the eating experience should be judged on the entire digestive process, not just the first few seconds of mastication. Although I stuff myself at every meal, I never experience the dreaded Itis, instead actually feeling more energetic afterwards (y‘know, like you‘re supposed to).

Gallo Pinto—the best part of waking up

In the two weeks since I started eating like this, I have not once experienced heartburn or gassiness . There was a second part of the meal that I had avoided until today. We were never served fruit, but there were always heavy baskets of guava, starfruit and papaya, as well as green lemons and green oranges (both oranges and lemons are green when ripe in Costa Rica) available for snacking in the kitchen.   IN the states, I mostly stayed away from fruit. To avoid dying, I would drink fruit juices on a daily basis, because they tasted better to me. Y’know, cause of the extra sugar. I continued my fruit-avoidance while in Costa Rica until about six hours ago when I took the dive and sliced the rind off a green orange with a pocket knife, then took a chomp.   It was like God had ejaculated in my mouth. And I was gay and into that sort of stuff. Well, that’s making a gender assumption. OK. It was like Gia had squirted into my mouth after I had gone down on her all night, which, as a farmer, is essentially what had actually happened.   For the rest of the work day (I was turning sliced timber into boards, but that’s another post), I was on a fruit binge. Sliced sunny star fruit, subtle, complex papaya, bananos sliced straight down from a jungle tree just off the farm’s property…I even ate a green lemon. Yes, fruit in Costa Rica is so heavenly that you can straight-up EAT LEMONS. GODDAMN.   Time for another starfruit.