Pura Vida Back Issues

Jan Yatsko, Artist email: jan@janyatsko.com




		Take a monthly peek into artist Jan Yatsko’s daily life in Costa Rica. Humor, reflection and inspiration are woven into her experiences that revolve around her passion for art, nature, culture and food.


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	February 2008 “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.” Groucho Marx Down here we all eat bananas, plantains, guineos and cuadrados. We also eat green bananas, ripe plantains, green plantains, black and purple guineos, pig guineos and apple bananas. Some you cook and some you peel and eat. To me, not only do they all look like bananas, but all the trees look the same too. It’s enough to make your head spin, especially if the only banana you grew up with was the peel and eat variety. I decided to ask my Costa Rican friends, Guido, Mayi, Hortensia, Eugenia and Luis (all pictured below), the experts regarding these tropical foods.

Hortensia, the 83 year old mother of Mayi and Eugenia, first explained the difference between the shape and color of the leaves. Mayi and Eugenia told me differences between the shape of the fruit and then made my mouth water when they described typical recipes. Guido, Mayi’s husband and experienced gardener, explained the growth of banana trees. Luis, Hortensia’s husband, and I had the best task...we were the taste testers.

Yellow bananas are your peel and eat variety, except when they are green. You peel the green ones and boil them like potatoes and create a ceviche with the small cubed bananas, onions, red bell pepper, and a sweet and sour sauce with lemon, vinegar and ketchup. My favorite peel and eat banana is the little apple banana that has a citrus flavor. Banana leaves are wide and a dark green. The leaves of plantains are not as wide and they are a lighter green color. Plantains, like potatoes, are always cooked. Green plantains are part of a popular meat soup that also contains carrots, squash, yucca, potatoes and rice. Black, very ripe plantains are sliced lengthwise and sauteed in butter for a sweet treat. One can also create a small “tortilla” with ripe plantains fried in butter and topped with refried beans and grated cheese.

Guineo leaves are very wide and strong and are the preferred leaves to make tamales. The guineo fruit is softer and requires less time to cook. For lunch, Mayi served a typical dish of cooked fresh beans with pieces of cooked guineo in a delicious bean broth. The addition of rice to the broth made it a complete meal. Yum!

Humans are not the only ones to eat bananas. In our backyard, sliced bananas and plantains are placed in a feeder to be eaten by many species of birds (like woodpeckers and Baltimore Orioles), iguanas and squirrels; and butterflies feed off of the sweet fruit of very ripe bananas.

Guido told me that a banana tree will produce fruit when it is about the same height of a man. It will produce one large cluster of fruit each year for about 2-3 years. Considering the amount of bananas we all eat, one can get a good mental picture of the size of banana plantations in order to keep us all happy. Next time you reach for a bunch of bananas at the grocery store check the label. One of Costa Rica’s major exports to the USA is bananas.

PATACONES

A great before dinner snack for guests with drinks like lemonade, margaritas or mojitos. Or use in place of french fries with fish or a good hamburger.

2 green plantains cooking oil salt

Peel the plantains and scrape the fruit slightly with a knife. Cut into slices about an inch thick and fry lightly in a pan with 1/4” of oil. Remove from the pan and squash them flat with the bottom of a glass into the shape of a cookie. Fry them again before they cool off. Sprinkle with salt to taste. Many Costa Ricans dip them into refried beans. Yum!!!!

Going to the dogs...and cats

A year ago a group of people formed an organization to help abandoned animals in our town of Atenas. These seven very dedicated people accept sick, hungry and abandoned dogs and cats into their homes to nurse them back to health with love and veterinary care. An adoption and castration program is also in place. Donated funds pay for food and castrations for the abandoned animals under the care of these people, who themselves are living on a limited income. I decided to help the group by donating one of my paintings to be auctioned off. I’m pictured below with Lorna and Darrell from Seattle who purchased “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie” (see my Gallery page on my web site). The group told me that the organization’s funds were down to nearly zero when the couple purchased the painting. You can learn more about the group by visiting:

http://www.costa-rica-live.com/AnimalesAtenas/Adopciones.html

March/April 2008

“Wholeness is being in tune with the wind, sand and stars.” Henry Beston

“Pow-wow” is a word derived from the North American Algonquian Indian name for shaman. It was a curative faith healing practice associated with the Pennsylvania Dutch until the early 20th century. My maternal grandmother was a pow-wow practitioner. When I was a teenager, I watched as she cured my mother’s infected finger by circling it inside the open knot of a cross-section of wood while reciting words in PA Dutch. Modern medicine couldn’t cure my mother’s finger but the pow-wow did.

The Bribri and Cabecar Indians of Costa Rica still cure sickness through their shaman-healers. According to these healers, sickness is created by an imbalance in the relationship between the person, his environment and the spiritual fields. The shaman’s role is to reestablish the balance by curing the body and expelling the supernatural causes that make people sick. Like my grandmother and other PA Dutch pow-wow practitioners, the Bribri and Cabecar Indiands use auxiliary tools, herbs, chants and a strong faith to heal. These Indian healers pass live chickens, bones, skins of animals, feathers and meticulously prepared medicinal plants over the sick body as the healer seeks help from animal spirits associated with the particular illness. The position of shaman-healer is not taken lightly. A child of 10 years is selected from a certain clan and is chosen for his good memory and quick ability to learn. During his long apprenticeship, he is taught ritual chants, mythology, spiritual beliefs and the secrets of medicinal plants as he passes through many initiations.

A Maleku Indian guide (one of eight Indian tribes in Costa Rica) once told me that the rain forest is their pharmacy. Young children accompany their parents or other family members to the rain forest and their long acquaintance with medicinal plants begins. During the February 2008 Explore & Create in Costa Rica tour, participants walked through the rain forest with their Maleku guide. He piqued our childlike curiosity by allowing us to see, touch, smell and taste medicinal and culinary plants along the trail. He gave us our first introduction to plants that heal skin problems, treat anemia and coughs, fortify blood, numb an aching tooth, add flavor to food and how one can spice up your sex life. We colored our journal pages with natural rain forest pigments and sketched these plants that had a quiet presence among the competition to survive in the jungle. It was like seeing a cow for the first time and realizing that milk doesn’t come in containers stacked on the grocery shelves.

Holistic Medicine

To most of us who are accustomed to the ways of modern medicine, all of the shaman-healer rituals might be regarded as witchcraft. Perhaps the fanfare of the Bribri/Cabecar healing ceremony is a way to prepare the mind of the sick person to believe that a cure is possible. All of us in the Explore & Create in Costa Rica tour learned about medicinal rain forest plants that are chemically copied to treat many illnesses. Go back and read the first couple of sentences of the second paragraph. Next read what constitutes Holistic Medicine, a healing practice that is becoming widely used throughout the world. Holistic Medicine is a system of health care that looks at the whole person. It takes into account the physical, nutritional, environmental, social, spiritual and lifestyle values of the person. It focuses on education and personal responsibility to achieve balance and well-being. I don’t see much difference between the philosophies of all the healers mentioned.