Every-time I decide to sit down and write a post, the Internet starts playing up. It has been on and off for days. Just like the weather! It has been blowing hot and cold and gets terribly windy. I thought that I should show you our February harvests before the month is over! We planted sesame seeds (wangla, in Belize) and they came up very nicely…they are tolerant of all extremities of weather and definitely one to plant all year round.

We did a test plant of about a 1/8 acre just to see how we could handle the harvest together. Once the pods had dried, they were harvested and hung up to dry. The pods split to emit the seeds. I took a picture of the pods just to show you what they look like…we are all so familiar with this seed but how many of us would recognise the pods or even the plant?

The harvested sesame seeds:

We pressed the seeds raw to produce a very acceptable vegetable oil which has a lovely rich yellow colour. I did not toast the seeds since I just wanted a normal, bland cooking oil. The seeds yield a lot of oil…for every 1kg (2lb) of seed we got about 500mls (about a pint) of oil. Here in Belize, the locals toast wangla to make a chewy sugar candy.

We planted another test patch with black peanuts. These produced very well. We only had about twenty seeds so we planted these to make more seed for a larger plot. This peanut plant was very vigorous and healthy and produced large pods. We will probably use peanuts for cooking oil too…once you start pressing your own cooking oil…there is no going back…the shop-bought bottles of cooking oil and so refined, blah and boring. Home pressed oil is so flavoursome and imparts more character to your food…it is like cooking with wine. Planting, harvesting, processing and cooking your own food brings your meals to a whole new level of experience!!

Okay, let’s have one more. We have had a good jackfruit season.

This is the first harvest of the season and there are more to be picked. Processing the jackfruit is quite laborious and they can all mature at the same time…when this happens, I have to devote a whole day (or two) to messy peeling and cutting. Since we have so much of it right now, we are drying the fruit to store.

Jackfruit: peeling can be very messy because it has latex that sticks everywhere…

The fruit:

This is a very generous fruit…the seeds can be boiled, toasted and eaten:

Okay, that’s it for now. Hopefully, I can write again soon!

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