Calanoa Kitchen

I don’t think I’ve eaten healthier or more well balanced than while here in the jungle. Farm to table meats and vegetables. Tasty too.

I had no problem releasing my curiosity and making myself at home in checking out the lodge’s cooking facilities.

The menu varied a decent amount considering they had used more or less the same basic ingredients for most of our meals. The food was always well balanced in flavors, textures, and types

Most of the food materials are bought from nearby towns. Here’s some Dorado, similar to catfish “but better.”

There’s a gas cooktop and a wood grill for most of the cooking

The wood grill doubles as a kiln for the kid’s clay sculptures. Lol.

They have a preserve pantry …

that has picked vegetables…

…and alcohol-infused fruits and herbs for mixed drinks.

The fresh produce changes depending on season.

And don’t forget the visiting monkeys.

They even have a clay wood burning oven that they can make breads and cakes!

Here are some breakfast breads for example…the darker one is an acai bread.

Volunteer cook

One day I told Hudson to go help cook. The first thing we did was help add citrus to a corn drink. Each meal was a different fresh fruit beverage, most of which I was trying for the first time. The drink was purple so everyone thought it was acai. No no, purple corn drink.

We peeled freshly boiled yams and smashed them with a smasher stick. They got mixed with fresh shredded cheese and butter to be our dinner’s main starch. Cheesy.

Shreddin catfish

Here we are sifting cassava flour, which got sprinkled on to a pan of butter to be fried into a chewy tortilla.

Catfish and cassava tortilla wrap on a slate plate for appetizer! We did that!

Here are a few of our other meals. Catfish in coconut soup, rice with some kind of browned bland legume, and a vinegar dressing salad with a fish mash of fruits like guava, papaya and pineapple. Healthy!

One lunch was a bean soup, chicken, and fried plantains with some cocoa juice to wash it all down.