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All things considered, Panamá gained a great deal from its long, contentious association with the United States. It has, undeniably, the best infrastructure in Central America and probably most of South America as well. Unfortunately for the U.S. the Republiscum recently buried programs to fix the country’s ailing infrastructure so that it’s not inconceivable that Panamá will surge ahead of the States in having a better infrastructure. But you know, repairing all those broken bridges, highways and water systems costs money, smacks of Socialism and doesn’t allow for further tax cuts for the very wealthy.

There’s a lot, though, that the United States could learn from Panamá. For instance, Panamanians have the highest sense of well–being in the entire world. The U.S. only comes in at #23 out of 145 countries. http://www.gallup.com/poll/175694/country-varies-greatly-worldwide.aspx

Here’s another couple of things the U.S. should get clued in on from Panama. Once you hit 70 you have to get a doctor’s okie dokie that says you’re fit physically and mentally to drive a motor vehicle. In the U.S. I recently saw a video of a woman over 100 years old (no lie) who is still on the road, and I bet she hadn’t seen a doctor in order to renew her license, either.

I went down to see my doctor at Hospital Chiriquí on Monday, had a brief physical exam and got my letter. Today is the first of July, the month I need to renew my license and decided to do it early. The license bureau is located at the Chiriquí Mall as is a nice sandwich shop that makes delicious Philly cheese steak subs, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone (writing tip: avoid using clichés at all costs). I got on the bus here in Boquerón a few minutes before 11. Got off at the mall and into the bureau at 11:15. There were two people ahead of me at the counter and they were handled rapidly.

I gave the lovely girl at the counter my papers, she made a copy of my passport and told me to have a seat. Before I could get my e-reader out of my back pack and settle in for a wait since there were well over a dozen people in the waiting area I was called up to a desk where I had my picture taken and give an eye test. That over, I was immediately directed to another room where I took a computer-generated hearing test.

That over I was directed to the caja to pay my fees. The total was $40, but being over 70 years old I received a 50% discount. After receiving my receipt I went to sit down outside the window where one receives their license. I was reaching into my backpack again but before my e-reader even cleared the pack I was called to the window. I signed two pieces of paper, was handed my license to terrorize the population on the highways and byways of  Panamá for another two years and was out the door.

The sandwich shop doesn’t open until noon and now I had to wait outside for another 20 minutes!!! Total time needed to renew my Panamanian driver’s license at the license bureau? About 20 minutes!!! Take THAT U.S.A.!! You guys should come down here and take some lessons and learn something!!

My regular blog readers know that my recent attempts at bread making have run the gamut from exceptionally horrible to simply, “Well THAT, didn’t work…”

One bread that I’ve always been successful with in the past has been a family recipe Shredded Wheat Bread.

And, if you’ve been reading this blog you’ll know that they don’t stock or sell shredded wheat here. SO, I searched on line for something else. I wanted a no-knead recipe. Counter space here at this house is VERY limited and I’ve even tried following instructions on how to knead bread in the bowl which wasn’t very successful.

I thought, perhaps, I could substitute oatmeal for the shredded wheat and there are actually a ton of recipes online for no-knead oatmeal bread. Don’t ask me why, but I decided to try THIS one out. Perhaps because is was one of the first ones that came up when I did a Google search.

Store-bought bread here in Panama leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, it pretty much sucks! So, I’ve been online the last couple of weeks digging up bread recipes. So far my efforts are about on a par with the quality of store-bought bread. It sucks.

I’ve tried regular recipes and kneaded the dough but that’s no fun as far as I’m concerned. And it’s messy as hell, too. Flour everywhere that has to be cleaned up. I even went into David last week and bought a HUGE bowl and tried kneading the bread in it. Not much better.

Years ago I used to make a great, no-knead bread from a recipe passed down to my mom by her great aunt, Laura. It called for shredded wheat and molasses. Delicious, easy to make and it came out perfect every time. Problem here is 1) I’ve only found ONE store that stocks molasses and 2) NOBODY stocks shredded wheat!

There are a ton of “no knead” bread recipes online. They’re almost universally the same. Three (or six) cups of flour, some salt, some yeast and a cup and a half of water. So I’ve tried it. Followed the recipe to the LETTER. Let it rise and at the end of that time the dough was like soup!

So, I slowly added the water a little at a time until the dough looked “shaggy” as per the recipe instructions. At the end of the required rising time (anywhere from 4 to 20 hours) the dough was STILL like soup!

On Saturday I saw THIS recipe on line. http://cookbetweenclass.blogspot.com/2012/10/baguette-variations-of-no-knead-loaf.html

WOW, looked good. I LOVE baguettes! Especially the ones I used to buy in France. It’s a well-known fact that in France no baguette makes it home with the ends intact. Don’t those look delish? The promise is…

So last night I mixed up the ingredients. This morning, after rising for nearly 10 hours, I took off the cover and found that the dough had more than doubled into a nice SOUP!!!

I followed the rest of the instructions except the dough didn’t form into the promised. It was impossible to “delicately shape each half into a long rod. I do this by gently squeezing, not pulling. Plop them on a cookie sheet (don’t worry, doesn’t need to be nonstick). The loaves will look kinda flat, but they’ll rise in the oven.”

BULLSHIT!

Look “kinda flat?”

BULLSHIT!

“They’ll rise in the oven”

BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT!! BULLSHIT!!!

This is the reality:

Bottoms scorched. Maybe a quarter of an inch thick in the center. A complete waste of time, flour, and stove gas!

I bought some genuine Tabasco Sauce today. I LOVE hot sauces. Each one is good for a specific thing. For example, Crystal hot sauce is absolutely the BEST THING to put on popcorn. Screw butter. For me it’s Crystal hot sauce made by the Baumer family in New Orleans. I happen to actually know Mr. Baumer. His boat was three slips away from the Lady Ann which I ran out at the lakefront. Crystal is also pretty damned good on red beans and rice. When I was getting ready to move to France I went out and bought five bottles of Cyrstal. The first time I went to the grocery store over in Antibes I discovered they only sold two kinds of hot sauce over there…Tabasco and Crystal.

I also like D’Elidas. down here since I’ve never seen any Malinda’s and D’Elidas is close. They just started stocking Sriracha sauce at Romero and Rey. That stuff, with a bit of melted butter makes an excellent wing sauce. I don’t care for Cholula.

Now Tabasco is interesting. I actually know where Avery Island is in Louisiana. Ran crewboats all around the place for several years, but never stepped foot on it. Here’s the thing about Tabasco…it’s good on, like red beans and rice, but it sucks on popcorn. HOWEVER, if you’re going to make a Bloody Mary, there’s only ONE hot sauce that will work and that’s Tabasco. PERIOD! Any other hot sauce sucks when it comes to making bloody Bloody Marys.

Now, when I took the bottle of Tabasco out of the box it came in I looked at the stuff printed on it. Interesting. D’Elidas is made of “Selected habanero peppers (not just any run of the mill habaneros, no siree, ‘selected’ ones), Mustard, Vinegar, Water, Salt, Onion, Xanthan Gum (whatever the hell that stuff is) and 0.1% Sodium Benzoate (mmmmm, sodium benzoate).

I first had Melinda’s sauce at a place on Caye Caulker, Belize. There was a woman there who set up four card tables on her porch and made lunches. The most fantastic thing on her simple menu was a lobster tostada: flat, crispy tortilla with refried black beans, a healthy heaping serving of lobster salad, some chopped lettuce and grated cheese topping. For a buck U.S. !
There was a bottle of Melinda’s on the table and it was FANTASTIC ! In the six days I spent anchored at Caye Caulker I had lunch there four times…(I didn’t discover the place until my second day). Melinda’s was the first carrot-based hot sauce I’d ever come across. The ingredients are: Fresh Carrots, Choice Red Habanero Peppers, Onions, Lime Juice, Vinegar, Garlic and Salt. No Xanthan gum or sodium benzoate for that girl.

Now, probably the simplest of the sauces is Tabasco. Ingredients are: Distilled vinegar, red pepper, salt. PERIOD ! That’s it. NOTHING ELSE ! The Peppers are ground into a mash on the day of harvest and placed along with salt in white oak barrels. After aging for up to three years, the mash is strained to remove skins and seeds. The resulting liquid is mixed with vinegar, stirred occasionally for a month. And there you have it.

On the side of the box is the Nutrition Facts box. There are 0 calories in the official FDA “Serving Size”. Total Fat? 0 and there is 35 mg of Sodium in that serving which constitutes 1% of your daily value according to the FDA. Compare that to a “serving” of Old El Paso Thick ‘n Chunky Salsa that contains 200 mg of sodium of 9% of your daily value and that’s per 2 tablespoons of the stuff. And you’re never getting up from the table after just using 2 tablespoons, are ya?

Here’s a challenge for ya! The FDA’s “Serving Size” for Tabasco is 1 teaspoon (5 ml). I DARE YOU to down a teaspoon full of Tabasco Sauce in one go. Ain’t gonna happen.

Ask anyone in the world what the first thing is they think of when they hear the word “Panama,” and the nearly universal response would have to be CANAL! One Hundred years ago the opening of the Panama Canal literally changed how the world worked. Shipping no longer had to make the treacherous voyage around Cape Horn, one of the worst places for shipping on the face of the globe.

Eventually, though shipping outgrew the size of the Canal’s locks. The lock chambers are 110 ft (33.53 m) wide by 1,050 ft (320 m) long, with a usable length of 1,000 ft (305 m). These dimensions determine the maximum size of ships that can use the canal; this size is known as Panamax. For years many new ships have been referred to as Postpanamax because they wouldn’t fit. Now, though, the country has been on a construction project unlike any other ever attempted. They’ve been building new locks to accommodate the larger ships. The new lock chambers will be 427 m (1,400.92 ft) long, 55 m (180.45 ft) wide, and 18.3 m (60.04 ft) deep. They will use rolling gates instead of miter gates, which are used by the existing locks.

To give you some idea of the immensity of this project take a look at these two videos updating the progress of the new lock system. Work is close to 90% completed. Income from the Canal today, and what will come from increased traffic (though it will take decades to pay off the several BILLION dollars the project will cost) is what makes Panama the most prosperous country in Central America and much of South America as well. Not only had the Canal project been a boon here ports all over the United States and Europe have been on a building boom, too, to match the anticipated volume of large shipping that will be coming their way with the completion of the Canal.

One thing worries me, though. This project has been a boon to construction workers in the country, and people don’t often think of all the businesses that support such a project…concrete companies, the drivers who haul the concrete and the land that’s being excavated. The mechanics who maintain those trucks. And it gets right down to the little corner “Super Minis” of “Chinos”, Panama’s answer to convenience stores where the workers spend their pay checks. What happens to all those people when the project is finished. What will they do for work then? Will it cause social unrest and massive unemployment? Time will tell, of course.