So if you take all the most delicious and unhealthy foods you can find, and throw them into one dish, you would end up with Yaroa, a Dominican street-food staple. It starts off with a layer of french fries covered with a healthy dose of seasoned ground beef, its then drizzled with mayonnaise and ketchup and smothered with a layer of Dominican white cheese. Lastly, its toasted until the cheese gets all nice and melty and gooey. Basically a heart attack in a styrofoam box.  But I'm young, right? A few yaroas won't kill me :)

What is that? Frog eggs? Hair gel? Larvae of some sort? Nope, this little beauty is called Chinola...but you may know it as passion fruit. Hard to imagine feeling any kind of passion for this unappetizing little ball of slime, but one taste and you will never go back. Chinola is a wildly popular flavor down here- from popsicles to mojitos, you can find it in just about everything...and that´s fine by me, and the rest of the D.R.,  since its fantastic. The fresh-squeezed juice kind of tastes like that tang drink mix your mom used to buy you as a kid (sorry I don´t have a picture of it, I drank it all before the thought occured to me to take out my camera), and the raw fruit also has that same twangy citrus taste, with a little added crunch from the edible black seeds. I know, sounds weird, but your just going to have to trust me on this one :)

The always classy Alexis with her chinola mojito