If you are a cook, or a foodie, bring every kitchen item you ever wanted or dreamed of wanting. Stainless steel pots are hard to come by and expensive. Crock pots, I think I have 5 or 6. I use one all of the time and now I will never need to buy another. I use them at night mostly; I put veggies and a chicken in them and go to bed. The first one up in the morning unplugs the crock and when I get up, I can pick the bones clean. Now I have the makings for soup, chicken and dumplings or chicken salad. The point is it is convenient and we have little or no conveniences in rural Costa Rica. I also use it when I am off at the farm and dinner is now waiting when I return.

KitchenAid Pro mixer, buy one; I use it everyday for cakes and bread (I make 8 - 12 loaves a week). They make great gifts; the bread as well as the KitchenAid mixer but I only give the bread away.

VitaMix, http://www.vitamix.com is one of the most versatile, useful, last for your lifetime, good for you appliances that you can own. Worth every dime if you care about living a good healthy life. You can buy them remanufactured and save some money that way. Just do it. I make oatmeal, flaxseed, and fruit ice cream in them. Yes, it is delicious and there is no milk in the ice cream but I do use yogurt. I suppose that counts as milk actually, but who is counting.

Meat grinder and meat slicer: I have two grinders, my KitchenAid grinder atachment (the original metal one by Hobart) and I have a big grinder for the whole cow size jobs. I bought the slicer for roast beef and bacon slicing. I have seen no cold cuts in Costa Rica that I would buy. Boars Head is not here. So I make my own cold cuts as well as cure and cold smoke my own bacon and make sausage.

Bring a Gas Grill, with a side burner. Very handy for grilling and I use it to cold smoke my bacon. For the smoke, I use coffee wood. Just soak your wood and place it on one burner on low with your cured pork belly offset on the cold side. It works great! It is also a great appliance when the electric is off.

Coffee grinders, I use them to grind my grains for bread baking although your Vitamix will also do the job. This week’s special bread has been, Coconut Bimini Bread with fresh ground coconut as part of the flour. The neighbors are thrilled.

Do buy the Jaccard tenderizer, you can thank me later for this tip. We like our meat suave (soft), and this gadget will make you look like a genius in the kitchen. Your guests will wonder how you do it. Many of them have given up on beef, or, they are still chewing.

Pressure cooker, buy a canning stainless steel one and bring an extra gasket. I have not used one in the states for years but here we use it. The ribs that were attached to that pork belly (bacon), I put them in the pressure cooker along with a can of tomatoes, garlic, onion and jalapeño peppers and when they are tender they go on the grill while I puree, sweeten and reduce the sauce to baste them. I also put up chicken and meat with veggies as that is as close as we get to fast food. Ball jars and lids are available here. This week I browned pork chops then added carrots, garlic, onion and whole potatoes along with a little chicken stock; locked down the lid and we had fast suave chops for dinner with only one pot to wash.

I always wanted to be a Super Mom when that was in vogue. One morning I woke up exhausted and shifted gears. How can you do everything? Well I still do most everything, but I take a little help from appliances so that I do not have to work so hard.

The appliance repairman came today to fix the new dryer. Apparently, there is only one repairman to do warranty work in the whole country and I had to wait for him to travel the circuit and come south to my neck of the woods. I am so thankful for my dryer. You must have a dryer in the rainforest. I just hate walking around damp with my clothes drying on my body.

If you comment or email me, please include your email address and I will reply. Or email directly ginnee@gmail.com

Everyday here is an adventure of extremes. The good, the bad and sometimes the ugly. Our neighbors are as good as it gets in any country. They are warm and caring, smart, highly educated, good salt of the earth people. My cousin in Massachusetts asked me yesterday if living here was everything I thought it would be? It is, and more. It is more joyful and on occasion more sad. There is more pleasure and sometimes more pain. My friend Joaquin, a Costa Rican, says I see things differently than he. I know this statement to be true as we come from different experiences, different cultures and because of my age I have had far more life experiences in a very different culture and time. All of this colors my view of life. We are not in Kansas anymore, not that I have ever been to Kansas.

Our neighborhood, Hacienda Atirro, is like a country club with pools, tennis court, a few horses, 2 cows and 5 dogs (we own 3 of them) who like each other and visit. This is not a gated community, it is special and unusual however.

I am cold smoking my bacon today with coffee wood. It will be whatever it turns out to be and we will like it. I am sure. I made sausage and eggs for breakfast today. My homemade sausage of course. It is good stuff. I would add fat to it if I could but the meat here has no fat. That may be the biggest problem with the beef, no fat and it is not aged. I am grinding my meat, but the flavor is just not the way I want it for hamburgers. It is too red, too fresh, not fatty enough; who would have thought that I would be saying, not fatty enough?

The family at the carniceria I patronize is always so glad to see me again. I bring my cooler and we fill it up for the ride home. Kristofer says, she loves seeing you come. Gringos eat so much more meat than Costa Ricans, or at least that is my observation. I eat very little meat actually but my family wants to know, "Where's the beef?", or any other kind of meat. Today the butcher gave me a gift of sausages. They are the sweetest people. I don't think anyone has ever given me sausages as a gift before.

We grilled the beef tenderloin (carne suave) this evening on the grill and added coffee wood for smoke flavor. It did add extra flavor and it was the best steak yet. I use a Jaccard tenderizing machine to help the meat out. That little machine is the most valuable tool in my kitchen. It is definitely in the top 10 of important gadgets.