A Typical Costa Rican Meal - Casado

Have you ever been to Costa Rica? I haven't, but I got as close as planning a trip there and to buy a travel guide for Costa Rica. It would have been lovely to go there to see some awesome bits and pieces of nature in the tropical rainforest or the cloud forest. Honestly, I don't know what went wrong and why we didn't go. It has been too long since.
Now with the World Cup going on and with the Bloggers Around the World challenge along that line, I get the chance to think about things again. Now, wouldn't that be wonderful to have a post for every country taking part in the World Cup. I wouldn't manage that alone, but I already see there is a lot of interest in the blogger community to try things also from not so often mentioned countries.
Anyway, I do what I can and for today I decided to do Costa Rica. Here we go ...

Sometimes there is the tendency to do some fancy things, but here I decided to go for a typical Costa Rican everyday meal. It consist of rice (arroz), beans (frijoles), some greens or salad and a piece of meat - in my case some chicken (pollo). Normally there would go some plátanos with it, but I couldn't get hold on any plantains today. Otherwise, I would have sliced the plantains up and soak them in salt water for 10 minutes, pat them dry and fry them off. However, since I didn't have any, I didn't do it.
Back then to the typical Costa Rican meal. This time we have rice, chicken, beans and a mixed salad with cucumber, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, onions, lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.
For beans I used some baked beans for ... I didn't have the beans in my pantry I thought I would have. Had I known, I would have bought some other beans while shopping today. anyway, baked beans will do.
All the different things are served side by side on the plat as you can see in the picture. Put together like this this meal is called 'casado', which means married.
From that a few flashes of the past come up. First of all, I have to say you find meals like this in neighbouring countries, including the Caribbean as well.
There I had the chance to go in the past, to the Dominican Republic. Well, I even went several times and one time I stayed a few weeks with a local family. They had no fridge and electricity not all the time and ... well, running water also not all the time. Now have a guess, what I had for a meal several times a week. Rice, beans, chicken and salad.
They didn't call that dish casado, though. However, I was asked several times whether I am casado ...
Most likely I will turn up the sound system soon and will go for some Merengue on my own. It's some good fitness, too.

Of course you see that glass on the picture, too. It's a fresco, juice mixed with milk. When I read about this kind of drink in my travel guide I immediately remembered the taste from back then. I often used to drink passion fruit juice with milk. Of course, the passion fruit was fresh. I couldn't achieve that today. So I got some ready juice. Just mix it 1:1, half juice, half milk. It's quite refreshing and lovely ...
Oh, all that makes me kind of a little sad, when I think about back then and on the ideas and plans I had and how nothing did work out. I remember all the sun, the sea, the beach and even the wedding with all that very very sweet cake and the lot of dancing and ...
Fine, we were in Costa Rica now. Casado is a filling dish and as I had it today it was quite tasty, too. Well, I had baked beans. Otherwise it will be a bit dry as I remember it. Think about it, would you love to eat that almost every day?

At least it's an inexpensive meal and you could vary the meat on the side or even use fish or no meat at all and put some corn tortillas on the side, too or some other vegetables.

Well, where are you still planning to go when it comes to food? Would be lovely to see someone going African in the coming days ...