EAT WITH ME: Puerto Rico

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Now What?

You're back from vacation...now what? Back to work. Well, in preparation for going back to work, we had Piña Coladas!

Piña Colada

For two large cocktails:
4 ½ oz white rum
3 oz coconut creme
6 oz pineapple juice
1 ½ trays of ice cubes

Whiz all together in a blender until smooth and frothy.
Garnish with cherry and pineapple!

The Rum is Don Q. The native Puerto Rican rum. Bacardi may be the world's best selling and from Puerto Rico, but the founder of Bacardi actually started making his rum in Cuba, before moving to P.R. Don Q has always been manufactured in P.R. But their sugar comes from the Dominican Republic. Shhhhh. Don't tell anyway. The guy who gave us the tour of the Castillo Serralles told us that.

The pineapple and cream of coconut. Shake that stuff up. The can of coconut will probably be separated and in need of a hardcore shake. I had to spoon and pour the whole thing into the cocktail shaker and spend a few minutes shaking to get the solids and syrup to come together.

Return From Puerto Rico

We've returned from our trip to Puerto Rico. A lovely island.

A beach near Guayama, P.R., our homebase for this trip.

Same beach. It certainly was breezy. The water was so warm.

A little bar/restaurant not far from the beach, we had a little snack here. Right on the water.

My first Puerto Rican Pina Colada. We don't know why it's green.

Day two. We returned to the beach from yesterday for lounging and swimming.

My Corona commercial. I threatened to throw cell phones in the ocean.

I've been drinking...not too much though. See that wall back there? That's where we had to open our beer bottles...we forgot an opener! It was a pain opening the beer and you easily cut yourself...right on your knuckle...open cuts hurt in the salt water.

We drove out into the dark wilderness for dinner. A nice little place. We had some great sangria. Buy some I mean multiple pitchers.

Day three. Ponce, P.R. Museum of Art. It was nice. They had a Rodin exhibit we couldn't take pictures of.

Flaming June! We love this painting and have a print of her in our house. She is so beautiful. I was totally misty when I saw her.

Castillo Serralles. The home of the Serralles family, sugar barons of days of yore. They created the Puerto Rican rum, Don Q.

More Castillo.

Schnoozberries. I don't know the spelling and can't remember the real name. They look like tiny little limes. You gently bite them open to reveal the light pink, slimy, pulpy inside. You suck that pulp out and eat the pulp and juice, spitting out the hard stone in the middle. They were tasty. Sweet, lightly tart. But really slimy and pulpy. The texture could turn someone running!

Update:
They are called Quenepas. Wiki entry here.

Day four. We headed to El Yunque. The Caribbean National Forest.

J-lo and I in the rainforest.

Rainforest.

Mountains and Rainforest. I loved the rainforest. I bit humid, but not very hot. We had a good weather that morning.

After the rainforest, we paid a guy to bring us out to the little island of Icacos. Nothing on the island but sand, rocks and some trees. The mountain in the distance...that's El Yunque. We were up where the clouds are. On the little hill right in front of us, there is a white building on the left side of the little hill. That is the El Conquistador Resort, a fancy pants resort featured in the James Bond film, Goldfinger. Funny thing. That boat...it broke...our boat had to tow them back to Puerto Rico.

Day five. The Bacardi factory. Two free drinks!

Tasty Drink:
1 shot of Melon Rum
Top off with cranberry and 7-up.
Watermelon Jolly Rancher!

Guess who bought a big fat bottle of Melon Rum!?