Culinary Delight

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August 3rd 2023

Published: August 4th 2023

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ClairesTravel

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Ellen's business

After Ellen’s nice breakfast, we got to tour her business. She has a small business, called Laurelis, and makes food for some grocery stores and restaurants. It started out with Danish pickles but has expanded to many different foods and juices. She has 3 employees and the facility is located on the first floor of the house. It has been upgraded to full commercial standards and is continuing to grow. Some of the products are different kinds of pickles, pickled zucchini and jalapeno peppers. The company also makes many kinds of juices using local produce and some recipes are made by specific restaurants and she is not allowed to share them. We were very impressed.

After short break she drove us to the food market. Oh my, where did they get all this fruit? I’ve never seen so much fruit in one place. There were so many varieties that we’d never seen before. Of course, we had to buy all the new ones to taste. We then headed to the meat section so that she could get the pork for lunch. Susan and I wandered around more and found the seafood location. There were these giant shrimps. One could have

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been a meal. What a dream come true to have this market nearby.

When we got home, the fruit was washed and then we spread it out on a table and had Simone write the name of each of the fruits. There had been some spices and bananas already on the table but the rest was all stuff we bought. The whole lot cost us only $13. And yes, their currency is US dollars. The jealousy monster came out in both of us. We tried Ellen’s favorite, Chirimoya, and the one Simone thinks is horrible, Mamei.

You break apart the chirimoya and she broke it easily into 4 pieces. We were surprised. The inside was white and had black seeds in each of the small sections. It had a soft flesh and was sweet. It almost tasted like it had crème in it.

Next Ellen cut the Mamei. Susan asked is it related to an avocado? It looked similar to the inside of an avocado except that it was orange. Luckily, it is not in the same family. The fruit kind of tastes like pumpkin and papaya mixed. We both liked it.

We will try the

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rest another day except for the naranjilla which Ellen used to make the juice we drank for lunch. Lunch is the big meal here and it consisted of fried pork, a beet-pea-onion dish, fried plantains, purple potatoes and llapingachos(potato tortilla with cheese inside). Claire also had some of Ellen’s pickles. We were lucky enough to try some of her mandarin preserves for breakfast.

Later in the afternoon she dropped Simone off at a coffee shop to see friends and we drove around a bit before heading to a different coffee shop for pastries and lemonade.

What a delicious day.

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