Panamania!

 Hello all!  I know, I know - long time no blog.  I apologize.  I have been traveling and computer-less (and dare I say, slightly more sane in a Facebook and iPhone-less world).

But now I am back, and although I haven't spent much (or really any) time in my kitchen, I figured I could share some of the fun and delicious foodie adventures that I experienced on my travels through - drum roll please - PANAMA!

We had the best meal of our trip in Panama City at an adorable restaurant called S'cena in the colonial neighborhood of Casco Viejo.  Here's the view of downtown Panama City from outside the resaturant:

We worked up an appetite for dinner by spending the day on a Jungle Cruise in the midst of a monsoon on the Panama Canal, where we got up close and a little too personal with these guys:

We started the dinner with ceviche:

And seared ahi:

And followed it up with salmon topped with fried plantain chips:

And steak with pineapple risotto:

S'cena may have been our best meal, but Panama City definitely wasn't the only place where we found good food.  At our hotel in Boquete, we woke up to find this complimentary breakfast waiting for us:

And as if all of that deliciousness wasn't enough, they brought out homemade apple cinnamon empandas too:

The meals (and Jungle Cruise) were definitely huge highlights of the trip, but hands down the most unique experience that we had was touring a coffee plantation!

We learned that Panama has some of the world's best coffee, which is consistently rated a perfect 100 points and sells for $300 per pound in Asia, although it is rarely exported to the US.

When the coffee "cherries" ripen, they turn red.

You can eat them just like a grape.  The seeds (or coffee beans) look like this:

They lay the beans out on this rack to dry in the sun for several weeks:

And once they've dried, they shrink and look like a raisin:

The coffee beans shrink too:

Here's what the beans look like prior to roasting (I think they resemble peanuts):

One of the coolest parts of the tour was that I got to do the roasting (the garb reminded me of when I used to volunteer in the ICU in college)!

First, I had to weigh out 4 pounds of coffee beans:

And load them into the roaster:

I had to heat the beans up to 450 degrees:

They have to be cooled off rapidly before they burn and turn the coffee bitter:

So the machine has this spinning device to aerate and more rapidly cool the beans:

The final product:

Good to the last drop!

Thanks for the memories Panama!