Tamarindo, Love and Limes

What better thing to do on a rainy day in Tamarindo than to start a new blog?  Welcome to Tamarindo, Love and Limes, the place where Tamarindo Grill Master shares stories, recipes, tips, tall tales, maybe some videos if we’re brave enough, and …well who really knows?  Time will tell!

I’m Diana.  I’ve been living in Tamarindo (mostly) since 1995.  I’ve done A LOT of things over the last 30 years (as one would hope!) and it’s all wound me back up in the kitchen–pretty much where I started this journey of life in Pennsylvania a half a century ago.  Who would have thought?  This blog starts where another blog more or less stops.  In 2013, during a hiatus in which I lived in WA State, I started a blog.   It traverses many of subjects including a murder mystery, an international move, a death in the family, and the promotion of several books. It’s a mishmash of languages, but based in English.  Interested?  Check it out:  Talking to Myself/Hablando Sola.

PS.  No, I was not born in the kitchen.  Not literally.  But it’s where Mennonite girls on farms in Pennsylvania in the 1970s spend one whole heck of a lot of time!

My partner in crime (and everything else) is Hernan.  Together, we’re Tamarindo Grill Master, and we stir up fun times and delicious meals wherever we go.  Hernan loves to surf, loves dogs, puts up with my cats, loves to cook, loves to dance, loves the two beautiful daughters he’s currently visiting in Argentina, and loves to travel.  It’s been almost a year since we formed Tamarindo Grill Master, and what a year it’s been!  Thank goodness the apartment we rent has an extra bedroom that we could essentially turn into a storage room.  We generally keep the bed tipped up against the wall in order to have enough space for the extra refrigerator, extra freezer, and piles of ingredients we buy in bulk. 

Both of us love to surf, so when we’re not shopping for your dinner or prepping for your dinner, we might be surfing!  I love my longboard, and Hernan loves his shortboard, so we don’t always agree on what constitutes a great wave, but we agree that the best place to start the day is in the water!

Everyone asks us how/where we met.  It’s quite a story, but the short answer (the official one, hahaha!) is that we met at a friend’s birthday party.  Hernan was grilling the meat, and I brought the birthday cake.  Interesting, right?  …and that is pretty much how it goes to this day, only now we’re throwing the party for you!

About cake.  As you may notice, our dessert menu is now grilled fruit and ice cream.  What happened to the famous cakes and pies?  Well.  Honestly?  I bit off more than I could chew with the dessert situation.  I love making desserts.  And I REALLY love watching people take a bite of what they think is just another chocolate cake when I know perfectly well that my recipe for chocolate cake is the best one on the planet. But I had to backpedal on that.  Leaping out of bed to bake every morning at 6 AM is no way to live if you don’t get home from preparing people’s dinners until 10 PM or after.  Especially if you love to surf and you believe that quality of life is priceless.  So we nixed the mandatory daily baking projects at first light, and I got my mornings back.  Although if you have a special occasion, or you say Pretty Please With Cream And Sugar On Top, I just might make you something special.  Depending on the waves.

Why the name Tamarindo, Love and Limes?  Because!  We’re in Tamarindo, where we work, live, and love life.  Love, because we love Tamarindo, we love each other, and we love what we do as Tamarindo Grill Master.  And Limes because limes, like love, are in pretty much everything we make!  Limes, or “limones” in Spanish, are abundant, they’re omnipresent, they’re healthy, they’re delicious, they’re the secret ingredient more often than not, and they are uniquely Costa Rican.  Yellow lemons are very uncommon in Costa Rica–what we refer to as “limones” on a daily basis, are actually limes.  And we love limes!  So there you have it:  Tamarindo, Love and Limes.

Some more things about us:  Our favorite things (besides surfing and each other)?  Limes!  Really sharp knives.  Rain.  Good music (cumbia, please).  Hot coffee or mate.  Malbec.  German shepherds.  Our Maine Coon cat, Anastasia.  Throwing parties.  Getting invited to parties.  Cool breezy mornings with off-shore wind.  Chocolate ice cream.  Tips.  Days off.

What do we hope for?  We hope you love what we do for you as much as we love doing it.  We hope the rainy season brings lots of rain so that the dry season is bearable.  We hope for big waves and off-shore wind.  We hope that travel and tourism flourish.  We hope to someday buy a piece of property and build our own house.  And then we hope to get a dog to go with the cats.  We hope the cost of gas doesn’t keep going up.  We hope to find a good balance between work and play.  We hope we can find decent avocados for everyone who orders guacamole. 

In a few short weeks, The Grill Master Himself will return from Argentina.  In the meantime I’m going to make a quick trip to Pennsylvania, to the land of venison and shoofly pie.   And then we’ll meet back here in the jungle, fire up the oven and the grill, and get this party started.  There will be chicken wings on the menu, empanadas, fresh fish, a rainbow of sweet potatoes,  rice, the best black bean ever, and love and limes for all.