Brownies de Maracuyá

I love passionfruit. I first had passionfruit at a buffet lunch in Bali, Indonesia, where I was studying at the time, and fell in love. (It was at this same lunch during which I learned that passionfruit was an aphrodisiac--just think about how you eat it (à la oysters) and use your imagination.) In Rennes,…

Arroz con Guandú al Coco

As I have written previously, I love to cook. And while I like to cook pasta the most, I am always keen to cook local (vegetarian) dishes. One of the most popular meals in Panama is arroz con guandú, or rather "rice with pigeon peas" (pigeon peas, according to a quick google search, are guandú beans). There…

Lemony Pasta Panamá Style

I love pasta. In New York, I eat pasta at least once a day--usually twice. "You don't get sick of it?" people ask me. Look...good pasta is good (bad pasta is, alternatively, not good). To help feed my pasta creatively, I have a rotation of emails I use to get free trials for New York…

Cobbler de Piña

Every year in the fall, many people in New England (plus New York) go apple picking. For the last few Septembers, my Instagram feed has been literally full of people going apple picking and bags filled with apples. Ten apples at the supermarket can be something like $2, even at Whole Foods. I never understood…

Haciendo Yoga

It's hard to make local friends in Pedasí. There are not a lot of "local" people that live here in the town of 4,012 official residents, and with high season coming this will only be exaggerated. But then again...what is local? How do I define "local?" I want to integrate into my community and speak at…

This is the Isthmus

Try saying that blog title five times fast. On October 15, 2017, I landed in Panama City for the first time in my life. It was quite an eventful journey, with both my flights (BOS --> EWR and EWR --> PTY) delayed, and I landed in Newark to find that my credit card had been…