Ooooooh…look at these…Cacao Butter Cookies made from Cacao Butter and topped with whole roasted Balam (Mayan White Cacao) beans. There is not much to say except…yum!! And, look at my gallery of pictures to entice your senses and fill yourself with the wonders of cacao.
The pulp was removed from the balam beans, sun-dried and then roasted whole. The paler ones were lightly roasted and the darker ones were medium roasted.
What a weird day for weather…one minute it was dull and grey and then the next minute it was hot and sunny. And it was so blustery. Make up your mind!! To add to all this, the power was going on and off. As soon as it switched on, I would get up to try to get something done and when it went off, I had to sit down again. It was like musical chairs!! Arrrghhhh!!!
Gnome had a better attitude; well, at least he was in a better mood by the end of day even although we both had an unproductive day.
“I am going to sit here and not move.”
Well, I guess we are not all as spiritually enlightened as the Gnome!! Despite the ups and downs, the farm is our constancy…still producing lots of lovely stuff;
Hope the weather makes up its mind tomorrow!!
We are at home on a Saturday night. There have been some stormy nights so it is best to stay at home, out of trouble. At least, that’s the Munchkin and Gnome’s motto. Here’s a Saturday Night Tune to get you going!
If you know where this tune is from, we have great respect for your entertainment choices!
Gnome reporting a purely administrative post:
Research And Product Development.
Product Development Spa Range.
Development of Individual Products.
Types of Ingredients That We Use.
Cheers and have a good night!!
This is an easy and delicious cooling dessert and it’s made from the bit that you usually throw away when you cut a musk melon.
This is what you do:
Scoop out the seeds of the musk melon and rub it through a sieve with a plastic spoon. You will end up with some thick sweet-tasting musk melon pulp.
Meanwhile boil 10gm of Agar in 900mls (1 quart) of water. You can buy agar from Chinese Super-markets or Health Food Shops.
Once the agar has dissolved, mix in the melon pulp. I also added passion fruit pulp with seeds. I used the wild Mayan Passion Fruit, Kun Batz…how’s that for something special!
Refrigerate for about an hour and enjoy! This is a healthy alternative to a cream bun. 😉
I have written about the making of banana flour in previous posts and our main reason for doing this was for preservation. From a completely practical point of view, if you are going to go through the trouble of processing (grating, drying and grinding), it is really important that you actually like eating it!
Hmmm….we were very dubious initially after making a banana flour pizza made from a recipe found on the Internet. The recipe called for 4 cups of banana flour and when I baked it in the oven, it came out like stiff card-board…let’s say that if you threw it at somebody you could cause bodily harm. We valiantly put toppings on it and ate it like a pizza.
The next morning…and a few days after…we were totally constipated…
We then decided to do the math:
4 cups of flour is equal to 32 bananas
therefore, we ate the equivalent of 16 bananas each in one sitting.
Imagine eating 16 bananas all at once! And worse still, without the water content of each banana!
This of course results in constipation!
Anyway, after that escapade, I was in no mood to make anything with this flour! A few weeks later, I decided to use it up and make dog food …I didn’t even think about it…I just put a cup of flour in a pot of water and let it boil. It actually came out like a nice porridge. Much to Gnome’s dismay, the tasty looking porridge was for the dogs and not for us:
“What do you mean it’s for the dogs?!!”
Since then, I have formulated the Banana Flour Porridge as follows:
1/2 cup of banana flour
1 quart (900mls) of water
1 can of sweetcorn (optional)
1 tbsp sugar
Pinch of salt
Place ingredients in a pot and stir on medium flame ( about 7 to 10 minutes) until the porridge thickens. Can be eaten hot or cold.
This serves 2 people. Yes, 1/2 cup of flour = 8 bananas! So, each serving is four bananas. The result: tasty meal and happily non-constipated!
The Flood Flies finally came last night and we were ready with Protocol Flood Flies still in place. Lock down started at 4pm and everyone (including the animals) were fed and watered by 5pm. Last minute shower and into the bedroom quick smart. Lights out! This morning, there was still some evidence of flood flies with their wings but not as much as previous years. Switching the lights off to reduce numbers really works and this year, I am actually not suffering from Post Traumatic Flood Flies Syndrome. Usually with the after-math of winged chaos, I am reduced to a depressed, quivering wreck armed with a vacuum cleaner in one hand and a snotty tissue in the other.
Phew…it’s all good! And so with rains come the planting. Gnome has bee planting sorghum:
We have planted more of the “brain” (Amorphophallus paeonilfolius) out:
Oh and Gnome has been cutting more houses for Coco-Prune Resort…there has been a sales boom and all the piggies want a luxury condo. Don’t try this at home guys…the table saw is done broke so Gnome is using a circular saw on a steel drum!! I know…cringe!!
But the Piggies want their million dollar condos! It was the Spa and Yoga that sold it!
The clouds have been gathering for days and we were wondering when it would start raining. This morning at 8am we heard the distant rumble of thunder, the sky turned from light blue to black in an instant and it poured down. We sighed with relief, the ducks quacked happily, the geese honked and the cat couldn’t care less. Get ready for the flood flies. Switch off all lights at 5pm tonight, close all doors and windows and run into the safety of your bedroom (or truck!). This will help minimise the invasion and hopefully this will mean less work tomorrow. This is the nuptial flight for termites. They leave wings everywhere in the after-math of their awakening.
Last Year….Arrrrghh!!!
What a mess…
Be Prepared!! We are!! Flood Flies Protocol is in place…that’s why you are getting an early post. We’re off to bed now.
Join us next year for The Flood Flies Day Lottery!