A story of baked goods and kosher crises in Costa Rica

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Opening a kosher hotel in a Costa Rica, a country where kosher food is not common has proved to be far more challenging than we could have ever imagined. It is not the luxury items that we miss, we can get some types of kosher cheese, and all of the ingredients Rachel likes to use to make her favorite blueberry muffins (a staple at any good bed and breakfast). We can even get our Morningstar Farms Grillers, and yesterday we found wasabi coated peas!!! We can eat wonderfully here if we don’t mind searching for imported food.
The problems that we have been facing recently have been far more critical. It took us at least 5 grocery stores and almost a week of searching to get kosher vanilla extract. It took even longer, and finally a number of calls to the Costa Rican Orthodox Congregation - Centroisraelita to find bread flour and to hash out which sugar and what yeast is kosher here.
Thankfully Rachel found wonderfully helpful contacts at the synagogue as well as at the Chabad House in San Jose, and I was finally able to eat some fresh baked bread for dinner.

Now if we were only able to find parmesan cheese- I think we could really learn to like it here 😊

Matt


Orchid Lodge's Website - http://www.theorchidlodge.com
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