The Fit Foodie®
THE PATH IS THE PRACTICE BY CELEBRITY CHEF AND INDUSTRY EXPERT MAREYA IBRAHIM, THE FIT FOODIE
Mareya Ibrahim is The Fit Foodie, a TV chef, holistic nutrition coach, author and award-winning entrepreneur and inventor. She is the author of “Eat Like You Give a Fork,” and a signature chef to the NY Times bestseller “The Daniel Plan: 40 Days to a Healthier Life”. Mareya is the host of “Recipes For Your Best Life” Podcast and is a frequent guest on national cooking shows. Connect with Mareya at mareyaibrahim.com.
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e were headed to Tamarindo, a place that lives by the motto “surf, eat and party.” We had surfed the white-wash waves and had eaten enough gallo pinto to stuff a small horse, but it was the fireball sunsets from our last trip that were our kind of fiesta, and has us looking forward to reuniting with the Guanacaste region’s Gold Coast jewel on our honeymoon. Yet the moment we drove into town, it started pouring. This was, after all, the rainy season in Costa Rica but we were only here for a night and we weren’t about to let that thwart our wave time. It was too early to check into Cala Luna, the area’s first boutique hotel on Playa Langosta just a few hundred feet from the center of Tamarindo, so we parked near Iguana Surf, stripped down to our swimsuits, and waited in line to rent a boogie board for me and a surfboard for my husband with about 20 other people who had the same idea. When we got our gear, we weren’t about to wait for the rain to subside. We played in the water for hours, raindrops dancing on our heads.
Costa Rica is not a place where you go to be an uptight traveler with an agenda. You have to ebb and flow with it like the tide. No one here is in a big hurry. The roads aren’t great and driving 25 kilometers might take an hour. You might wait longer than you think you need to for things. To that, they will say ‘Pura vida.’ People are too caught up in gratitude to let the little things get to them. Catching a wave or drinking a cerveza, walking through a rainforest or watching the monkeys above you like you’re in an episode of Wild Animal Planet, all seems to make the stress of the world dissipate like the rain did and in this moment, I welcomed that with my whole heart. The walk to our room was quite literally through a jungle. A path lined with dense, green plants and trees of every size held the last of the rain’s droplets, clinging to the leaves and shimmering in the humid air. We changed quickly and headed to El Mercadito, an openair food court with options from Poke bowls to Florentine-Style Pizza, helado (ice cream) to authentic Costa Rican comfort food, which is exactly where I landed. I was famished from all the water play and ready to eat with abandon. For $7, I got a real homestyle feast loaded up with gallo pinto, stewed chicken and potatoes in a coconut sauce, salad and a side of pickled cauliflower and carrots. Nothing had ever tasted quite this satisfying that I could recall, so when my husband deftly wedged his fork
26 Harvest to Holidays 2021 www.edibleorangecounty.com
