Mofongo Fever

As I mentioned, we ate PR food in Rincon, and it was tasty, though we had a bad reaction to some of the fish. The dish in question is called mofongo, and it's a national dish or PR, sort of. I'd never heard of it, but it's all over the place. It's based on fried (of course) plaintains, to which they add a stew, and it's killer, it's just that we got some bad fish. It wasn’t your typical food poisoning, but more of an allergic reaction, which can be worse. It wasn’t, thankfully, but it was a bummer, nonetheless. We did a little research on Google and found out that there is a name for it, scombroid. It stems from eating fish that is a little spoiled, and is specific to bigger fish like tuna, shark, swordfish, and mahi, which we had. Apparently when the fish spoils a little, it develops allergans (histamines) that are not degraded by heat, so even if it’s cooked thoroughly, you will still react, which we did.

We should have reported the incident, but left it at that. No more fish for us on this trip, that’s for sure. We’ll stick with fried meat and dough. We also had a bit of a GI incident drinking smoothies, which again, took us by surprise. There is a smoothie shack that got rave reviews so we checked it out, and I have to confess, they weren’t that good. The guy was all “probiotic” about it, trying to promote all these macrobiotic additions, which for the record cost more.

The smoothies were good because they were fruity and cold, and it was hot outside, but the tastes were just okay. And we got sick, so scratch that one off the list, as well.

Boy, we sure are taking a beating on this trip. Maybe we should go with a vegan diet, though raw veggies are the main source of food poisoning, so you have to just roll the dice.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to keeeeegan for the pic.