Art Project- Butterflies

The Beautiful Butterflies of Costa Rica

Who doesn't like butterflies?  I can't think of anyone, can you?  Imagine a place with a beautiful, tropical landscape, sparkling beaches, amazingly diverse plants and animals AND over 1250 different species of butterflies!!!  It's Costa Rica.  This place just gets better and better :)  I'm definitely gonna check on flight prices after this post.  I need a vacation :) 

Costa Rica is home to about 10% of all the world's butterfly species and, if you think about the size of the country, that fact is amazing.  The butterfly population helps the people of Costa Rica with more than just making their country pretty, they help pollinate the plants and trees and also provide another tourism draw. 

Butterfly gardens and conservation tours are a big draw. The Butterfly Conservatory seemed like a particularly educational trip.  The beauty and fragility of these creatures is astounding. 






The most well-known of the butterflies found in Costa Rica is the Blue Morpho.  This beautifully bright blue butterfly (say that 3 times) is also a master of camoflauge.  You'd think that a bright blue butterfly whose wingspan can reach almost 6 inches across would be an easy meal for a bird, right?  But when the Blue Morpho closes its wings it is the same color as wood or dirt.  

A swirled brown and black, with large "eyespots" that are meants to scare away anything that sees past the camoflauge.  When it is in flight and not easily hidden, the Blue Morpho has a crazy, erratic flight pattern that makes it hard to catch.  Nature is so cool.  So, in honor of this beautiful creature, we are going to make a butterfly for our art project this week.  Let's go...............

The Blue Morpho
For the project you will need:

• black craft foam sheet or paper
• brown paper or felt
• blue glitter, sequins, feathers
• pipecleaners for antennae
• glue
• scissors, exacto knife (supervised)

1. Cut your black foam or paper into shape of butterfly.  I folded it in half first so both sides are equal.  It was sticky-back foam so that's why it looks white on the back.










2. Since we used sticky backed foam, we decided to cut out what was going to be the blue sections.  Once they were cut out we flipped them over to the other side.  When we peeled the paper off the sticky section the glitter stuck right to it.  Smart, right?  Well, read on, it didn't work as well as planned.  Does it ever?

3. Now that you have the pretty blue wings made, peel the paper off the rest of the butterfly and stick it to the brown felt or paper.  Cut off excess brown.

4. Put a bunch of glue or double-sided tape in the "blue" section area and add the blue section back.  I didn't have double -sided tape but I think it would've worked better.  The glue didn't stick very well- maybe paste would be even better? 

5.  Add the antennae (I stuck them between the black sticky foam and the felt)and your beautiful butterfly is done.

Pretty!!




Update: It's the next morning and the glue we put on in direction #5 never stuck.  It just melted into the felt.  Oh, well.  Hopefully yours works better or you come up with a better idea.

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On the Menu: Costa Rican Food

Beans, Beans the musical food...



That's a lot of beans!!!

I won't finish that little ditty, but you adults know the rest :)  Guess what we're making today?  3 guesses.... BEANS!! Black beans are a main staple in the Costa Rican cuisine.  I found them in many recipes and, even though the kids probably won't eat it, I decided to make Black Bean Soup.  In Costa Rica, they eat a dish called gallo pinto, which is basically black beans and rice, for breakfast, lunch or dinner.  I remember when I lived alone and I would do the same thing!  $5 worth of ingredients could feed me for a week!!  Another common dish is fried plantains.  Plantains are those big, huge bananas that you see at the grocery store but you've never bought because they always look black and over-ripe.  Apparently they are supposed to look like that :)  They can't be eaten raw and are usually prepared deep fried.  I don't deep fry very often, so I found a recipe that oven "fried" them.  The reviews said they tasted as good as fried- we'll see :)  The cuisine of Costa Rica is a blended cuisine of the foods of Spain, America, the Caribbean, and South America.  All I know is that my house smells pretty good right now!!  The soup is cooking as I write this, read on to find out the results :) 

Black Bean Soup
For the recipe you will need:

• 3 cups black beans - I used canned.
• 1 med. onion - diced
• 2 or 3 stalks of celery- diced
• 1 red bell pepper - diced
• 1 cup of fresh tomato or 1 can diced
• 3 cups vegetable broth
• 2 cloves garlic - minced
• 1 tsp. fresh ginger - minced
• 1 Tbsp olive oil for sauteeing veggies
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp cumin
• 3/4 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp. thyme
• 1/2 tsp. cayenne
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp clove
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• sour cream (optional)
• shredded cheese (optional)

1.  Saute the onion, pepper, celery, garlic and ginger in the olive oil until onion is translucent.  If using fresh tomato add that too.
2.  Put the cooked vegetables and all the other ingredients in a slow cooker and cook about 4 hours.  Or you can cook on stove top by bringing to a boil and simmering about 30 mins.
3.  I blended my soup (so the husband wouldn't see the tomatoes, bell pepper and onions) and served it with some shredded cheese and sour cream on top.  We also served it with.....

Oven Baked Maduros (sweet plantains)
For the recipe you will need:

• Ripe plantains- black spots are good.
• cooking spray

1.  Heat oven to 450° F
2. Coat nonstick cookie sheet with cooking spray.  I also used non-stick aluminum foil (just in case)
3. Cut the ends and peel plantain.
4. Cut into 1/2 inch slices on the diagonal
5.  Arrange on cookie sheet and coat top with spray
6. Bake for 10-15 minutes, turning as needed, until golden and tender.

Ok, this meal might not be the prettiest think you ever plated up, but it is GOOODDD! At first I thought it was going to be really spicy, but when the sour cream and cheese were added it was perfect.  I mean really good. As good as a restaurant good.  The plantains were nothing special- kind of a warm banana.  But the soup was delicious.  The kids never got past the "brown-ness" of it, even when I served it with tortilla chips and called it "dip".  Ah, kids!  My cooking genius is wasted on them :)

Week 35: Costa Rica

Costa Rica- the Land of Riches

Or a more literal translation- the rich coast.  We are headed to an amazing country this week- Costa Rica.  I didn't know much about this relatively small country in Central America, I knew it was supposed to have great beaches and rainforests but that was all I knew.  What a surprise to find this wonderful country!  I love doing this blog.  First, a little background ...

Costa Rica is located between Nicaragua and Panama in Central America.  The capital is San Jose (9.92°N / 84.07°W).  The area had many indigenous tribes but none of them were a strong force, so when the Spanish Conquistadors came ashore in the early 1500s, they were pretty quickly assimilated into colonial life.  Those who fled the Spanish retreated to the hills quietly.  Because there were not many indigenous people to be (forced) laborers, the Spanish colonists had to work their own land.  This was not very popular and so Costa Rica was not a very popular place to colonize.  That was a good thing for the Costa Rican people, without the oppression of the Spanish, the culture was allowed to grow into a very egalitarian society.  That's a fancy new word I learned- "egalitarian".  It means that the people were equals and free from "upper" and "lower" class inequalities.  Sounds good, right?  The country was freed entirely from Spanish rule in 1821 and by 1838 the Republic of Costa Rica was born.

This is a country that I think all other countries should take a look at.  Aside from the egalitarianism (wow, the word can get fancier!) of the country, they are also very forward thinking in other ways. 

• In 1948, the country disbanded it's army and decreed that instead of an army of soldiers their country would have an "army of educators", and so, there is a very high literacy rate and good schools throughout the country.
• 25% of the country is considered to be protected national parks and recreational hunting has been banned.  The biodiversity of the country is now one of it's main sources of income.  "Ecotourists" come to visit the rainforests and national parks to see the sloths, monkeys and other animals that make Costa Rica their home.

• The government of Costa Rica has decreed that they will be carbon-neutral by 2021 and they have been ranked as one of the "greenest" countries by various world agencies.

 

 

 

A phrase often associated with Costa Rica is "pura vida", which means "pure life".  This reflects the Costa Rican way of life much like "Aloha" represents the Hawaiian mentality.  Ticos, as the Costa Rican people call themselves, use "Pura Vida" as a greeting or as a response to "how are you?".  I can't think of a more perfect attitude and I can't wait to learn more about this great country.