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[quote=”costaricafinca”]Why I questioned this article mentioning the low cost, it really sends an incorrect message that one can purchase these items for ‘next to nothing’.
Hopefully the doctor can fill us in or at least answer our question.
We moved here from Canada over 11 years ago, and even then, we couldn’t purchase ‘a basketful of produce’ for this price.[/quote]
Unlicensed street vendors in San Jose are pretty cheap when it comes to vegetables. If the fruit comes free and little meat in the diet the cost isn’t all that great.I am also assuming that the article was written before 2009 when inflation really startted hitting us.
[quote=”maravilla”]underfed? they eat better than most people! and those are actually boneless leg/thigh pieces so they are quite large, and those get cooked with sweet potatoes, carrots, squash, lentils, a little rice, and green beans. and that stew only lasts about 4 days!!
[/quote]Perhaps my computer deleted all of the explanation in your earlier post where it said “for my dogs”. I only saw that phrase next to the part about the “4 pieces of boneless chicken legs”.
I was already aware that removing the bone from the chicken leg/thigh pieces made them boneless, but not until now was I aware that it also made them larger. I’ll shop for smaller pieces, remove the bone and get more for my money!
See Maravilla, that last paragraph, like my earlier post, was made in jest. Perhaps it may be your sense of humor that is undernourished, or more likely you didn’t realize that I was trying to make a joke – then & now!!!
he crbill — now i get the joke — i think. i guess 4 pieces of chicken for two dogs for 4 days sounds pretty scarce, but it’s actually 8 pieces of chicken if you consider that the muslo is leg and thigh. jajajaja
[quote=”maravilla”]he crbill — now i get the joke — i think. i guess 4 pieces of chicken for two dogs for 4 days sounds pretty scarce, but it’s actually 8 pieces of chicken if you consider that the muslo is leg and thigh. jajajaja[/quote]
That’s “actually 8 ‘quite large’ pieces of ‘boneless’ chicken” in a stew that sounds quite fit for a king – or a knight!
If only Campbell’s was so tasty…. jajaja
yep — all human grade food for my dogs. years ago when we had a restaurant i used to take home all the pieces of the tenderloin that we couldn’t sell because they were too small. i would make a stew with the meat, some carrots and celery, and basmati rice. my husband always got home late at night after the restaurant closed and one night i heard him come in and go right to the stove where a big pot of carne con arroz was sitting. i heard the lid come off and a metal spoon clank against the side of the pan. i got out of bed and went to see what he was doing and there he was standing at the stove shoveling in spoonsful of dog food and mumbling about how good it was and why hadn’t i ever fixed that for him before this. i had to explain that if was the dog’s dinner he was eating!!!
[quote=”mollie-o”]Americans always assume everybody is from the US. My comparison is with prices in Canada, not the country you consider the belly-button of the world, the great US of A…. And yes, I find car insurance expensive here, it is the same as in Canada.
I spend the same amount of money to live here as I did in Canada. You make it sound good that Ticos live on less than $1000 a month, you should open your eyes and examine how little they have and how they eat on less than $1000 a month. Do you see many Ticos buy fruit? Do you see many Ticos buying fruit? No, and why is that? Do you think they can afford fruit? Not on less than $1000 a month, they can’t.
One more thing, I would bet anything that you people writing about how cheap life is here have very substantial incomes, live in or around San Jose, in gated communities perhaps? Go out into the real Costa Rica and see how you like that Costa Rica, see how the other half lives. You know so many people who save $25,000 or more per year living here, I know lots of people who live on that much. You are only talking to and about a certain category of people, rich Americans.[/quote]
I am not American – and certainly do NOT consider it they belly-button of the world – and forgive me but I made that assumption based on the fact that the vast majority of our VIP Members are from the U.S.…
The people I was referring to are in no way rich people and are indeed living on much less than US$25,000 per year …
Perhaps you should “open your eyes” and look into the healthcare insurance costs in the US and you’ll quickly realize that many families are paying huge sums for health care coverage …
We have done surveys on this site with our VIP Members into healthcare insurance costs where a surprising number of people agreed that: “I can’t afford health insurance.”
Most people paid less than $500 per month but quite a few were paying over $1,000 per month…
We have also done surveys about property taxes on this site with a very surprising number of people paying over $3,000 per month and a big percentage paying between $1,000 – $2,500 per month …
Scott
mollie-o, I don’t know which “real Costa Rica” you live in, but I can tell you from regular personal experience that many Costa Ricans do, in fact, eat plenty of fresh produce.
We shop in the feria in Grecia every Friday afternoon. There, you’ll find fewer than five percent of the shoppers to be identifiably non-Costa Rican, but the amount of produce for sale would overwhelm a Walmart distribution center. It’s likely that not everything sells out every weekend, but the vendors wouldn’t be bringing that much produce to the feria if someone weren’t purchasing it.
Why would one of several broccoli vendors bring a pickup truck overflowing with broccoli if not in expectation of selling most of it? And why would their broccoli-selling competitors, of whom there are a number, do the same? And the same can be said for every other commodity.
How do Costa Ricans afford their food purchases? Well, most of them live in homes they own outright and drive cars which they also own — uninsured cars, for the most part. And with property taxes assessed at 0.25% of the recorded value of the property, they’re not spending much there, either.
So what’s left? Phone service for $7.50 a month, electricity with rates based upon the level of consumption, $5 water bills and no sewage charges, cheap Internet access, low or no heating or cooling costs, locally-sourced wood for cookstoves, lightweight year-round clothing, the CAJA to provide most medical care, and on and on.
and remember, too, that there’s a banana and plantain tree in nearly every yard, and many homes also have orange and lemon trees as well. ticos often grow a bit of corn and beans in the backyard, and most ticos i know have a few chickens for eggs and for meat.
[quote=”maravilla”]
2 liters of raw milk
[/quote]Hello everyone! My first post … Love the site so far. so very informative. 😀
I saw raw milk. We have switch to raw milk several months ago and pay a VERY inexpensive $5 a gallon for it because we buy 10 gallons at a time and freeze it until we need.
LOVE raw milk. Is it very common down there? I do not want to ever go back to pasteurized milk, and would love to know that raw milk is readily available down there when we coome to visit.
Thank you!
[quote=”Scott”]We have done surveys on this site with our VIP Members into healthcare insurance costs where a surprising number of people agreed that: “I can’t afford health insurance.”
Most people paid less than $500 per month but quite a few were paying over $1,000 per month…
[/quote]Just an FYI and to add a cost to this discussion. Our health insurance, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, $400 deductible, no referrals needed, is just under $1200 a month. Very expensive.
Of course the endocronologist specialist I have been seeing would have cost over $7000 so far this year had I no insurance at all. I need knee surgery for a meniscas(sp?) tear and who knows how much that would cost with no insurance.
That aside, our property taxes are only $1300 a year. Quite a contrast to my friend up in New Jersey who pay about $15,000 a year.
That list of groceries that was posted earlier? If I were to go the local supermarket in the very small town (700+ people) that we live in, we’d pay around $50 if not over. So some savings there.
I buy raw milk here in Quepos from a truck that comes around once a week, Quepos is more on the touristy side as far as towns go here, so if I can get it here, I can only imagine that it is even easier in more rural areas. I pay c2500 for a gallon, so that is about $5.00 give or take. It comes in a used container, bleach bottle, salad oil bottle…you never know, but so far, it has been clean, and safe and SO much better then the milk in the carton with the years of shelf life, which really the only other option here as far as I have seen.
I read recently that one of the reasons that they homogenize milk is because the cows can be milked almost non stop, so there is all sorts of things like pus (sorry) that ends up in the milk, and no the process of homogenizing does not remove the pus (again, sorry) but just makes it stay in the mix better, look it up.
Of course there is some danger associated with drinking raw milk, but really only if it is not handles correctly. It is VERY easy to pasteurize it at home by simply heating it up to 160 F., and then letting it cool down. Easy stuff.Thank you for that, your response is much appreciated. I may have to research milk availability further in Costa Rica. I do not want to pasteurize it at all because it kills all the good enzymes and vitamins and minerals in the raw milk itself, which is why I prefer it. My health and skin has improved substantially by switching, something I track very closely.
So it may come down to being educated as to where the milk comes from exactly. If we ever move to Costa Rica or similar, we may have to invest in a milk cow or two. something our current property covenants do not allow. So we drive an hour to the nearest Grass Fed Organic farm and get it. Delicious stuff! 🙂
Though, it seems to me the whole diet in the area is substantially more healthy than here in the Good ole U S of A.
[quote=”pranaspakeywest”]I buy raw milk here in Quepos from a truck that comes around once a week, Quepos is more on the touristy side as far as towns go here, so if I can get it here, I can only imagine that it is even easier in more rural areas. I pay c2500 for a gallon, so that is about $5.00 give or take. It comes in a used container, bleach bottle, salad oil bottle…you never know, but so far, it has been clean, and safe and SO much better then the milk in the carton with the years of shelf life, which really the only other option here as far as I have seen.
I read recently that one of the reasons that they homogenize milk is because the cows can be milked almost non stop, so there is all sorts of things like pus (sorry) that ends up in the milk, and no the process of homogenizing does not remove the pus (again, sorry) but just makes it stay in the mix better, look it up.
Of course there is some danger associated with drinking raw milk, but really only if it is not handles correctly. It is VERY easy to pasteurize it at home by simply heating it up to 160 F., and then letting it cool down. Easy stuff.[/quote]Lot’s of locals sell raw milk, [b]but[/b][i][/i] that doesn’t mean it is organic.
It will depend on where you vacation, whether raw/organic milk will be available in your area.
I buy it, too.Unfortunately, the author of the original article hasn’t confirmed the pricing or stated where she shopped.
raw milk would be hard to find in the city, i would imagine, but here in the campo there are more cows than people. before i started getting my raw milk, raw butter, and raw milk cheese from the lecheria, i used to get my milk from a neighbor who had a cow. the food police will not kick in your door here for buying and selling raw milk, which we all know is so much better for you than that stuff they sell here that sits in a box on a shelf and has a lifespan of 3 years!!! jajaja
I came from a large family and we had a milk cow. No of us ever had any problems with raw milk. We had plenty and gave it away. Eventually it got citified around us and some started to say we shouldn’t give that milk away because it could make you sick. My father read the hand writing on the wall and we quit giving it away. Sure was hard pouring milk into the ditch to get rid of it; felt like such a waste.
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