Julia Childs Just Rolled Over in Her Grave

Saturday was my first cooking lesson.  Jungle Man proceeded to show me the steps to making rice and beans.  Not to be confused with rice and beans.  The rice was washed, practically scrubbed to remove the “chemics” then the pot was filled with water one knuckle above the rice.  Seems reasonable.  Once the rice was complete a can of tuna and vegetables were added to the rice.  The dry beans were put on to boil, adding water ever 20 mins or so for an hour?  I don’t know for sure as we actually eat them for dinner.  I’ve eaten the rice and tuna before, and it’s surprisingly good.  I’m not sure what kind of oil the tuna is in but it is reddish.  The vegetables in it are peas and carrots.  I think.  

Great, so now we made food at home and there are left overs, what do we do with them?  Leave them on the stove of course!  As an American who was taught to put all left overs in the fridge IMMEDIATELY to avoid salmonella this makes me slightly uncomfortable.  When I was here before I ate the tuna and rice concoction after 24hours of being in a container unrefrigerated and survived, but that was out of necessity on a 12k hike and I was starving.   

So on Sunday I reboiled the beans morning and night as instructed so they wouldn’t go bad.  I ate them Sunday night and Monday morning and afternoon.  The rice seemed to smell a little funky in the morning so I cooked it longer and added the beans.   So far so good.  

Back to the no refrigeration thing, while traveling I’ve notice many countries do not refrigerate their eggs.  Costa Rica included.  In fact if you get the eggs straight from your own or your neighbors chickens those eggs don’t need refrigerated either.  Even in 95 degree 95% humidity.  Crazy what our chicken industry does to those nasty store bought eggs that need refrigerated.  Sorry for my anti hugeass chicken egg bias.  But you should really think twice about those nasty store bought things.  If you don’t believe me, buy some store bought eggs and some from your neighbors and crack them open to see the difference. 

Anyway,  Jungle Man returned about 6pm and said the rice was bad!  He was concerned that I had eaten it for lunch. Hahaha  18 hours later I’m still not sick so I should be fine.  Lessons lessons…

Plus I'm sure adding a lot of this covered the smell and the taste and probably killed the bacteria! :)