It has been the third day of work to try and get the Piggie Cage done. Wasn’t as productive this time as it started to rain and there wasn’t quite enough cut lumber; I ended up trying to attach welded wire on to the front…I don’t really have the right tools to work with it (except tin-snips), which made it a painful and prolonged process of fitting. I was grateful when it started to rain so that I had an excuse to stop. But we must soldier on for the Piggies!!
Here is the photo for the third day of construction…
Bad Weather and Union Trouble Has Delayed Construction of the Piggie Four Seasons Hotel ($1100 per night); Riots Are Breaking Out in Piggie-opolis and the Mayor Has Been Threatened!
The saw is going to have to come out again for the fourth day and hopefully the weather will allow further work to be done. The cage is starting to get heavier each day and it will be interesting to see if it is as “movable” as I would like, especially once the Piggies are in it.
Today I did not know what to write about so Gnome suggested that I walk around our farm and take pictures of new yummies to harvest.
Big Bunch of Bananas.
When these bananas are ready for harvest, we will probably do many different things with them since it is a huge bunch. Deep-fried thinly sliced green bananas are a must! I will also sun-dry some of the bananas, grind them up and make flour out of it. We will, of course, enjoy some of the bananas ripe.
Sapodilla Fruit.
Sapodilla fruit have a soft flesh similar to a peach but not as smooth in texture. There is a strong cinnammon-like flavour and they are very sweet. Gnome has called first dibs to make sapodilla wine and we will probably eat the rest as fruit. When they are sun-dried, they make a very good substitute for dates. Incidentally, sapodilla trees were once cultivated in Belize for its sap which was used for the original chewing gum (or chicle). Our trees are still too young to be tapped but watch this space in a few years for a post on home-made chewing gum!
Green Peppercorns.
I am waiting for the green peppercorns to turn red (have been waiting 2 months and still no colour change). Once they change colour then they can be harvested and then processed into white pepper. I am getting impatient so I am actually starting to pick some green peppers to add to my meals. They are really hot at this stage. The green peppercorns can be harvested at this time and dried into black peppercorns.
I am so pleased with the produce on our farm; it changes from week to week and I love thinking of all the exciting yummy things I can do with all this food.
Today Gnome and I found some new mushrooms on our land. Gnome is the expert on fungus and can usually make spot identifications; and so, when he exclaimed that we had found “King Alfred’s Balls”, I responded with glee because it was such an amusing name.
“King Alfred’s Balls”
I did an Internet search on King Alfred’s Balls and came up with nothing. After an extended search, I finally found the actual name of the mushroom was “King Alfred’s Cakes” or Crampball”. The Gnome had the right identification but he mixed up both of the common names! Anyway, it is interesting because I could not find any documentation of the mushroom ever being found in Central America; records show that it has been found in Europe, Northern America and Australia. This may be the first spotting of King Alfred’s Cakes in Belize!
Daldinia sp.
The mushrooms feel like rocks to the touch and when you actually cut into them, they are black on the inside and have the consistency of charcoal. Apparently, when King Alfred was hiding away in the countryside during the war, he was given the task of tending to the cakes in the oven. He forgot (or fell asleep, or something) and the cakes ended up resembling charred balls. The other common name is actually due to the fact that it was once a belief that if you carried these mushrooms under your arms, they would alleviate cramps.
These mushrooms are inedible (boo-hoo! No recipes for this one!). They can actually be used as tinder and can be used just like charcoal.
After all this, Gnome still insists that King Alfred’s Balls is a much better name!
Yes, this one is about eating again…I am having a good run of yummies! This time, I am cooking chicken in ginger ale (beer). In Belize, ginger ale is bottled in a ubiquitous glass Fanta bottle and is available in all supermarkets. I have not seen any other ginger ale brands in Toledo but you might be able to get an imported brand up in Belize City. The best thing is to make home-made ginger ale for this recipe but that will be a post for another day.
Ginger Ale Chicken with Rice and Greens.
This is a really simple recipe and it tastes yummy; the chicken gently caramelises in simmering ginger ale and you eventually get a lovely thick sauce which is spicy and sweet. Addition of lemon sauce and extra ginger to the marinade gives a tang and a tingle to the whole experience.
It has started getting cold today; I suppose it is about 20C (from the usual 35-40) but it feels like it is below zero. My feet are cold, I’ve got to wear a wooly hat and the only way to keep warm is to move around. I can’t believe I actually am living in the Tropics.
With that aim in mind, I finally started on the new and improved, movable, self-feeding Guinea Pig Cage. The frame is made with 1″ Nargusta reduced from a 2″ by 4″ with a table saw. It is four feet by 10 feet and will be two floors. I haven’t decided wether I’m going to call it the MGM Grand, or the Bellagio, or Bel Campo, or maybe the Wild Orchid…
Side View of Future Piggie Five Star Accommodation, $900 per night!
This recipe is great because it incoporates peanut candy bars bought in Belize. I have seen these everywhere in the country and they can be bought at any local super-market. They are so versatile because you can break the bars up into smaller pieces and put them in your home-cooked meals.
As well as being a good source of protein, it also adds crunch and texture to food. Moreover, the sugar in the bar caramelises once it is cooked adding more taste to the whole meal.
This is another recipe for the frustrated local ex-pat who tells me over and over again that there is nothing to cook in Belize! For the overseas reader, probably any peanut brittle/candy bar can be used in this recipe.
This is yummy mixed in with minced beef and formed into little cakes;
I sold my first trial of 6 bottles of Bumps Done Gone! in the local pharmacy. In Belize, “Bumps” is a local term for acne or pimples; “Done Gone” means in local terms that it has already gone. It is an acne treatment which has been formulated to unblock pores and made with natural essential oils including rosemary and grapefruit.
This is really good (for me) because it is nice when I start a new product and people buy it. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot for all of you out there (I should be manufacturing zillions and making zillions and taking it to China to replicate, right?)!
It is an achievement when you formulate something by yourself, bottle it and make your own label to stick on to it.
I haven’t written a meal related article for a while. Well, it is because I have been having a bit of trouble with grapefruit. Straight after the Tangerine Marathon, the grapefruits started raining down.
Well the trouble started with trying to convert to a grapefruit only diet first of all…at the time, it seemed like a good idea (well, before we actually started). Anyway, I maxed out at only four grapefruits a day because I was eating the skin and pith around the flesh and it turned out to give me digestive problems. It started off with gastritis, a bit of abdominal spasm and then bountiful flatulence. It was not very amusing…I can tell you that.
Anyway, I am not one to give up on food so then I started eating only the pulp of the grapefruit. This meant that I had to painstakingly remove skin, pith and pips and with this tedious activity, I maxed out at two grapefruits a day.
I next tried to incoporate grapefruit pulp into all our main meals. It is actually okay used as a side serving with the mean meal in place of the vegetables. It is especially good with a fatty meal as the citrus helps to cut through the grease. However, the common yellow grapefruit is not particularly photogenic and the insipid pale yellow colour really doesn’t add excitement to the overall look of a dish.
A Side Serving of Yellow Grapefruit witha Meal.
The picture is actually quite embarrassing but I assure you that the meal tasted better than it looked. This is real home cooked food which is made for the purposes of eating and not for appearances. Hence, sometimes colours are not correctly balanced but I suppose this is probably a better potrayal of real food.
Anyway, after a few days of that, the grapefruit citrus flavour was really getting on my nerves so I decided that some creativity was needed, on my part, to please the taste buds.
Well, I am of the opinion that any thing that is fried usually tastes good so I tried my hand at some grapefruit fritters. I basically mixed grapefruit pulp in flour and mixed it to a custard-like state with no water added. I added salt, pepper and chopped hot chilli peppers to the mixture. The result was okay; well, it looked okay:
Grapefruit Fritters.
However, truth be told, the grapefruit fritters tasted quite bland and you couldn’t taste much of anything. The only thing going for it was that it happened to be deep fried in oil! So, sorry, this one is not going into the recipe section.
In conclusion, we all have our share of disasters and disappointments in the kitchen. Not every meal that you eat can be a snap-shot beauty but let’s try to remember that it is the taste that matters. Meanwhile, I will persist valiantly with the grapefruit eating since they are still falling off the tree!
This is a picture of the Mayan Cacao which is called Balam in Toledo, Belize. The latin name is Theobroma bicolor; it is an unusual variety because the beans are actually white (as opposed to black/purple) and its pulp has a strong, pungent smell and taste. September to November is the usual harvest time and we are collecting them from our trees right now. They are usually ready when they fall off the tree and the fruit starts showing a yellow tinge. The fruit is esteemed by the Mayans here and they like to grind the fermented cacao beans to make a chocolate drink; in fact, they think the taste of this bean is better that the normal chocolate bean (theobroma cacao).
Toledo is hailed as a good cultivation area for cacao plantations; local farmers have been encouraged to plant normal cacao for international chocolate companies. The current feeling on this “White Cacao” amongst the chocolate-making community is that it is not a variety that imparts a taste familiar to high standard chocolate.
Well, I don’t really care about what top chocolatiers think because I like to eat and experiment with everything we have on the farm and I am not swayed by fads and fashion. Right now, we are drying and fermenting some beans out in the sun with a view to making our own home-made chocolate. I will keep you posted on what happens to our white chocolate. As an interesting aside, the pulp of the cacao has characteristic aromas similar to jack fruit (and durian) and because I like oriental smells, I think it is intensely fragrant and tasty.
