Vegetables, unchecked

Every Thursday we shop the farmers’ market at San Isidro. We buy the usual fruits and vegetables and also bring home unfamiliar ones to try, often the two of us barely able to carry what we’ve purchased and packed into shoulder bags and backpack. With oranges less than the equivalent of one dollar for a bag with a few dozen, and fresh greens and herbs just pennies per bunch, how can we do otherwise?

Tomatoes, even the green ones, must be used within a day or two or they flatten themselves out, collapsed on the spot. The same for peppers. Avocados turn ripe overnight, as do the mangos. Herbs and spinach must be dried quickly for later use; if not used within one day, they turn black. Pieces of ginger root, used regularly, ignore kitchen politics and shoot out green from their uncut ends. The lifespan of picked potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage seems shortened, and I wonder exactly how much vegetables purchased up north – even the organic ones – have been tampered with, and with what.

But it’s the beets, carrots, yuccas and other roots – as well as the winter squash and chayotes – that have me most worried. These veggies are put in a basket under a dry, shaded and open kitchen shelf. Within 1-2 days after the market, they start to grow! It’s eerie enough that beets are grapefruit-sized or larger, but for them to have sprouted new leaves overnight is a bit much. Ditto for the carrots. Their greens, too, grow about a half inch per day, sometimes more. Yucca, other as yet-unidentified roots and squash settle into the basket for an overnight, then start to grow new white roots that sprout quickly in all directions.

Perhaps the worst culprit is the chayote. Left alone for less than a week, this hard-skinned, cabbage-tasting vegetable splits itself open to create an escape route for inside leaves that have formed. Once it had started new life, I didn’t have the heart to cook this determined vegetable. Instead, I planted it in a pot next to a houseplant, where a few avocado pits that had been tossed on the surface had also quickly started growing trees.

Costa Rica – rich coast – is a self-perpetuating place of dense foliage and rampant growth. Forests thicken, crops rise, cut foliage sprouts again. Even its vegetables refuse to be domesticated, defying anyone with a kitchen knife to tell them otherwise.

As I write, a bird in a nearby tree cries loudly, “Uh, oh! Uh, oh!”

This place is on the move. 