A LINGERING TASTE OF SUMMER

Bees are gone from from the fields by this time of year but their products remain. The design and colors of the table cloth look very Provencal to me.        

STILL LIFE WITH ROOT VEGETABLES

Maybe it's just my loose associations, but this has something of an alien look to me, like undersea polyps or sea slugs.           

GOOD ADVICE

A detail seen at the farmers market. Beef and pork production are a major contributor to greenhouse gasses in this country, not to mention a wasteful use of water resources. We are not vegetarians but we don't eat much meat any more. Chicken and fish, yes, but little of the four-footed products. (Ellie whines for burgers sometimes.) Lots more veg meals. I don't miss the stuff. My cholesterol dropped 30 points in the last year.           

NAME YOUR POISON

That phrase sounds like it should come from an old Western movie but I can't find a source online. Anyway, there are usually vendors of more than food products at our farmers markets and this is an example. It is a local business called STL Barkeep. They provide fancy cocktails and bar services for any event, as well as selling small-batch, slightly snooty spirits. You can't read the label with this resolution but the clear bottle with the white label says Encryption Vodka. That's a concept I could get into. No one will ever know. The bottle to the right is Origin Gin, which is a bit too cute for me.           

TRAVEL THE WORLD WITH SAUSAGES

A little strange? I can see touring the world with its wines or even beers but bratwurst not so much. By the way, Troy is a town on the edge of the St. Louis area and has nothing to do with Greek epic poetry.               

FIG FARM

Tower Grove farmers market. Looks like more peppers than figs but I guess you could grow almost anything with organic techniques. Personally, I think organic fruits and vegetables are a waste of money. There are specific reasons but it would take a long time to set out all the data.       

THERE AREN'T A LOT OF PURPLE VEGETABLES

I finally got off my rear and found some new local material. There is a Saturday farmers market in the city's second largest (and my favorite) park, Tower Grove. It continues every week until Christmas. There was a big turnout with mild weather yesterday. I've never seen the like of this and, in general, purple vegetables are rare - some potatoes and maybe eggplant/aubergine on the outside. Might buy some next time.               

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - CARDINALS FANS ARE EVERYWHERE

Back in the farmers market in Liberia, Costa Rica. I did not notice until I started editing photos that this man was wearing a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap. As we walked by, I remember my eye being drawn to his shirt - it was in English and I tried to read it. Had I been more observant, I would have tried to engage him in my bad Spanish.

As it happened, one of the Cardinals' all time great players, Ozzie Smith, was on our flight from Miami to St. Louis Friday night. Ellie was wearing a bright red Cardinals tee shirt and we encouraged her to go shake his hand in the boarding area. She hid behind mom.         

LIBERIA

Liberia is the principal town of Guanacaste Province in the northwest of Costa Rica. Wikipedia says it has about 58,000 people. We took a walking tour with a guide on Thursday. Above, a sample from the tiny church on which the village was founded in 1769. Below, the Thursday-Friday farmers market. Produce in the US can hardly compare in freshness and flavor with what we find here. The middle picture shows plantains, not bananas. Fried pieces are a part of every traditional Costa Rican meal.

Home very late tonight. Hope to get more editing done on the plane.      

STL DPB On The Road - People in The Market

The power was out here last night for about four hours during the time I usually edit photos. We were lucky to find a small restaurant that had a propane stove where we could get carry out dinner. These pictures were difficult to work with because  the vendors all had green translucent awnings over their tables, creating a color cast that was beyond my Photoshop skills.

Some people were cheerful, others not. It was hot and the market wasn't very busy. The boy in the second picture is wearing a variation on a St. Louis cardinals cap.

Home late tonight. Long layover in Miami. May get more editing done. There is more to see.   

STL DPB On The Road - Farmers Market

We took a tour yesterday of Liberia, a city of 57,000 and the capital of the province, Guanacaste. It has a Walmart now. (Sigh.)

One of the highlights was a walk through the farmers market, bursting with color and unusual flavors. We don't know what the things in the top picture are. I think the second has plantains, not bananas. More to come.       

Pura Vida

You could say that pura vida is the national motto of Costa Rica. It has a simple literal translation - pure life - but the levels of meaning are much deeper than that. It expresses an attitude toward living in a complete, happy and content way. The words describe how we should treat one another.

This young man was a member of a crew setting up at the farmers market. (He didn't just fall off the plantain truck.)  Our guide asked him for me if I could take some pictures. He thought the idea was terribly funny. Pura vida.                        

Fruit & Veg

There is an outdoor farmers market in Liberia. It seems to get going about mid-afternoon and run into the evening. There was every kind of edible tropical plant, plus eggs, queso fresco, breads and I don't know what.

It's all very inexpensive - to us. The pineapples above were about US$ 2 each. Limes had strange skins that would put off American shoppers, although we never saw one like these in a cocktail. I'm less certain about the next two. Maybe casava root, followed by red potatoes and a kind of squash, or maybe something else altogether. The lush fruit at the bottom is mango.