All posts by Munchkin

The Usual…

July 19, 2017 Munchkin

So, what’s the usual for us? Gnome put it quite succinctly today,

“I spend most of my time just fixing things and nothing gets done!”

So, the freezer is on its last legs and we are systematically going through all the food to preserve them. So far, we have canned the fruit and we have made miso out of the canistel (it’s bright orange, by the way). Next are the chicken feet (I know, you are probably wondering what I am doing with 50lbs of chicken feet…I’m not quite sure either). No, that was a joke…I know exactly what to use chicken feet for…they actually make the best soup.

Gnome is still working on his construction and yesterday it nearly all ground to a standstill again. The circular saw stopped working! Luckily it started working again once the brushes were cleaned out.

Oh, and the washing machine…that stopped too last week and I had to hand wash a whole load. I was really annoyed because I had chucked in a load of towels and sheets! Anyway, Gnome had a good look at it and it appears that the water sensor for medium wash is broken. Well that’s actually okay because I just need to set it to a small wash instead and it works. So, we managed to bypass that problem. Gnome says that washing machines should last forever…you just need all the replacement parts for the sensors and the capacitor. We are going to keep our washing machine going no matter what!!

Just as an aside, Gnome took the outer cover:

and gave it to a goose as cover around a nest (a while back). The goose actually snubbed the gift and moved all her eggs to a different area. Talk about being difficult!!

“No I don’t want the washing machine cover around my nest!!”

I want to end with something nice. So here it is: this is a huge 4 lb (2kg) mango given to us by the Taiwanese. The seed is really thin and tiny so most of the weight is the flesh. Oh, and the best thing about it is that it tastes so sweet and divine. We are definitely planting the seed!

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food

Adventures in Eating…

July 12, 2017 Munchkin

Hello There!! It’s a bright and shiny day today so I feel a bit brighter and shinier. How interesting that the weather has a lot to with your mood. Anyway(s), we are doing okay although our never-ending construction has come to a temporary stand-still due to massive pond formations around the house. Nevertheless, we have braved the days with our usual creativity and Munchkin & Gnome interesting ideas. Since, we were both stuck inside the house together (with rains), we decided to have some adventures with food. So, here’s some of the stuff that we got up up to in the kitchen, messing around.

Lotsa aubergines from the farm:

These are very nice cooked on a cast iron grill and served with a little bit of olive oil drizzled on top. Yum!!

Ahhhh….this one is for the Chinese or the very adventurous; these are stinkhorn mushrooms (aka bamboo pith). These come out with the rains especially near bamboo patches but generally speaking, they do come up fairly commonly everywhere on our farm in Toledo.

This is a very pretty specimen with a lacy veil.

These mushrooms can also be picked at their young stage (aka known as Witches’ Eggs).

Clean them up, chop them up and put them in soups and stews. This mushroom imparts a slimey texture kinda like eating fish eyes (ooooh…that’s the Chinese coming out in me…I’m trying to tell it tastes really good….but, you probably think that sounds really awful). On the other hand, you could also describe them as “land oysters”…there, does that sound more enticing??

We are still going with the gelato; this one is made from canistel which is in season right now.

Canistel kinda tastes like cooked sweet potato. There is a lot of carbohydrate content in the fruit and this provides a firm texture to ice-cream. Oh, and we made this on with ground fresh jalapeño. By the way, I just noticed that the picture looks a bit like a pair of breasts(!). It wasn’t my intention but there you go!!

We still have more messing around in the kitchen. Our 27 cubic feet freezer is in its last death throes. It’s moaning and groaning and making awful gurgling noises all the time. Plus, it’s sucking up a whole lot of electricity. So, the plan is to to can (in ball jars) everything in the freezer until there is nothing left. Switch it off and let the old freezer rest in peace. That’s no mean feat if you can guess how much food a Munchkin is capable of hoarding!!

Belize, Farming, Food

Back To Cast Iron Baking.

July 10, 2017 Munchkin 2 Comments

We are going back full circle again. When we first came to Belize, I didn’t have an oven so I used to bake in a cast iron pot on the stove top. Anyway, the cooker (the oven and the knobs dropped off one by one until there were none) carked it a couple of months ago. So, I have gone back to cast iron baking again. It’s not actually difficult at all and it takes less gas (butane) and time. You don’t spend a whole 30 to 60 minutes (with a Mabe oven) waiting for it to heat up to the correct temperature. It just takes five minutes to heat up the cast iron pot and lid.

Just use your favourite bread recipe (of course Munchkin doesn’t have a recipe…she just chucks flour, water, yeast, sugar, salt and whatever exciting things she can find (miso, grains, anything really….oh…great tip…old condiments or end bits of jam in jars are great to chuck into bread). Mix it all up, knead into dough and that’s Munchkin’s Chaos Bread.

Please remember that my “chaos cooking” started off with following recipes and doing it over and over again. In order to get to improvising and creating, you need to put in the “10000 hours” of cooking. BTW, I may not have mentioned that I worked as a cook whilst I was in medical school so have been cooking for a very long time.

If you require a bit more structure to your cooking methods, here is a standard bread recipe courtesy of Fannie Farmer Cookbook:

Take a large mixing bowl and add 1/2 cup of lukewarm water and 1 package of yeast.
Let stand 5 minutes then stir to dissolve the yeast.
Put in another bowl: 1 cup milk, 1 cup boiling water, 2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp salt. Stir until lukewarm and then combine with yeast mixture.
Add 3 cups of all-purpose flour. Stir and add more flour if needed to make the dough.
Knead, let rise, shape and bake (see below).
This recipe makes about 8 to 10 rolls.

Okay, so this is what you need to do:

Heat up cast iron (12 inch diameter will do) pot (grease bottom well) with lid for 5 minutes on medium-high heat.
Take bread, shaped into rolls, and place in cast iron pot.
Turn heat down to lowest and bake for 8 to 10 minutes with lid on.
Take lid off and flip bread over with a metal spatula. Bake for another ten minutes.

Et viola:

Cool on wire racks as you do with any old sort of bread.

Enjoy:

Belize, Farming

Oh Dear!!

July 6, 2017 Munchkin 4 Comments

Oh dear, I think everyone has probably got a complaint or two about this horrible weather! Well, we’ve lost 4 animals. Two because of the cold, dampness and rain and two from a snake and all in one day. Well, the two casualties in the mini emergency unit didn’t make it: old grey goosie in Wheel-Barrow 1 died of pneumonia and The Overlord (aka male turkey) in Wheel-Barrow 2 also passed away. In the same morning, we found a dead duck in the coop; Gnome noticed some blood on its leg but did not think anything of it. Later in the day, we counted the number of ducks that we had in the coop…1-2-3-4-5…hey, wait a minute, there was another one missing. Gnome said suspiciously:

“There’s a predator about!!”

He then scanned his eyes around the coop and found a bloated boa hiding behind the guinea pig cages digesting something the size of a duck:

“There it is!!”

One of our rules on our farm: do no harm to any animal unless it takes the life of one of ours. So, we had to “take care” of this one with Gnome’s pellet gun.

The second rule is to eat what we kill: this one is going to be a curry…

Retrospectively, it looks like the the first dead duckie was probably killed by the snake and she was the next meal.

Rest in Peace our dear animals!! And we hope that everyone out there is having a better time!! Try to stay dry!!

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Still Going…

July 4, 2017 Munchkin 4 Comments

It’s the Wet Season and the puddles have coalesced into ponds and we are ankle-deep in water. I am not exaggerating!! Nevertheless, the work still needs to be done. It’s all day rains right now so you basically have to run out during the breaks to get things done. Yes, I wish right now that I could hole myself up in a cave (with a full pantry) and ignore the whole farm! But alas, the animals need to be tended to, the farm still needs maintenance and can’t be ignored (otherwise it will turn into one horrible mess) and I still need to harvest and preserve the fruits of the season.

Gnome, despite his hand injury, is trying to help me out and is doing “light work” right now. He’s helping me collect vegetables and fruit and generally trying to keep the level of the humour up by reading to me…he could pick something like a light novel…but this is Gnome humour…

Here are some pictures from the farm; we have been harvesting wax apple….have to get them before the birdies…

The craboo are flowering…really quite beautiful:

Oh and on Sunday we had a few casualties from the torrential rain. We have a very old grey goose (we reckon she is ancient…like about 30 years old… because she has cataracts) got caught in the rain. I found her all sodden in the mud and she was too weak to move. She’s now been placed in emergency wheel barrow 1 with water and food. The other casualty was the Overlord (aka male turkey) who had been sitting on turkey eggs for 7 whole days without taking any breaks. Alas, he was found with his face down in the grass…for a minute I thought he had carked it but he let out an enormous whimper. I quickly dried him up and carried him to emergency wheelbarrow 2; he seems okay now but is really crabbit (I think this is a Scottish word that means crabby) and feeling very sorry for himself.

Right now our mini medical unit is under the house. I hope that we don’t get any more sick animals because we have used up all the wheel-barrows!

Anyway, the Duchess (aka female turkey) is still sitting on the eggs…what a champion. Let’s hope that we get some hatchlings out of this one…about one more week to go.

Belize

Back On-Line…

July 3, 2017 Munchkin

Yesterday (Sunday) was quite a day!! It started off with very early morning rains with black, heavy grey skies and it poured down all day. There was a power cut in the wee hours of the morning (no idea what time it was but it was still very dark). In fact there was no electricity all day (and we were not expecting it to come back because the weather was so awful …I don’t blame the BEL guys for not wanting to come out in torrential rain…and it was a Sunday and nothing happens on a Sunday here).

Oh, and we also got flooded in at the Jacinto junction so there was no way of getting onto the Highway (unless you swam or procured a canoe).

We were stuck. We couldn’t do anything!! So we sat with lots of candles (it was very dark inside and the sun was completely blocked by black puffy clouds) and talked all day. It was actually quite refreshing not to have a computer (with noise, constant clicking of the mouse, silly stuff on FB and the constant Internet distractions).

It was lovely to have nothing. The silence was welcome and we really enjoyed each other’s company. I am thankful for these days that affirm that “we don’t need anything except for each other.” Sometimes, you just think it is it is sentimental stuff that is just things that you say without meaning it. Well I mean it…Munchkin and Gnome really do get on well with each other!!

The electricity (surprisingly) came back on about 6pm. We were just about to call it a day and go to bed!!

On a different note, Gnome has unfortunately hurt his hand (tried to lift a very heavy thing, lifted the heavy thing and ignored the pain in his hand whilst lifting the heavy thing). He is currently out-of-action with regards to physical, heavy work on the farm. Family (particularly Gnome’s Mother) and Friends, please do not be alarmed. This just means that he has sit around for the next few days until his hand gets better.

Amusing, Belize, Food, Plants

A Few Small Things…

June 30, 2017 Munchkin

Oh it’s a horrible, grey muggy day today!!

Gnome admonishes me and says, “Stop complaining, Babes…”

And I reply, “It’s not a complaint! It’s a description!!”

It is really grey. It is really muggy. 🙂 Ha-Ha, one must keep up the humour especially during these times and use emoticons to show that everything is really in the greatest humour possible!! 🙂

Well anyway(s), here are a few small things to show you what’s happening.

Since my Mabe cooker done broke and I don’t have an oven, we are resorting to our old “tried and tested” methods again. Back to the Dutch oven and cooking over coals. We had a stash of Fray Bento meat pies from British Foods Belize so we decided to cook them traditional style. They puffed up very nicely (a lot better than the conventional oven) and they are a little burnt since we haven’t cooked like this for a while. These were a nice Sunday afternoon treat. Also, the fire kept the bugs away for a while which was a welcome break.

This is a vegetable that grows on a vine which we have planted up the side fencing of the Duckie Zen coop. The best way to describe them is that they taste like firm, little cucumbers but they have to be cooked. They are growing prolifically with all the duckie fertilising so we are harvesting a basket of these each day. I’ve mostly been steaming or putting them into soups and stews. This vegetable is called tindali (a vegetable of Indian origin)and was obtained from the Spice Farms in Toledo (courtesy of Dr Mathew).

Oh, and it’s Mango Season again! This is the chance to stuff yourself with Mango everyday…it’s great. There should be a Mango Festival down here at this time of the year; it is definitely worth celebrating!

A while back I tried to make some home-made senbei (Japanese rice crackers). I used ordinary glutinous rice flour because that was all I could find. The final result was that they were chewy (still tasted good) but not the usual crunchiness that you would expect from these type of crackers. After discussing with Gnome (and reading Wiki entries) we realised that the Mochiko flour that is traditionally used is cooked (not raw) rice that has been dehydrated and then ground into a fine flour which then gives the crunchy quality to the food. So you can’t get Mochiko flour for love nor money in Belize (!) so Gnome says that when we get really bored (ie. during the rainy days when we can’t get out) he will help me make the flour. Watch this space…it will probably take about 72 hours to make the flour by hand!

Keep well everyone and keep on going despite the weather!! Well, we’ll keep on going because we like to think that we are cool and tough…Ha-Ha!!

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Monsters Everywhere!!

June 29, 2017 Munchkin 2 Comments

It’s that awful buggy time of the year again…June and July. The Monster Mosquitoes are out to get you and they are biting through clothes and socks. Despite all this, we still need to get out there. But we sure are doing our jobs faster so we can run into the protection of the house (although, there are still mosquitoes in the house). 🙂

Anyway, on a more positive note, there are other monsters (better!) on the farm…

With the big over-night rains, practically over-night, all our plants have quadrupled in size. There are Monsters Everywhere!! Check out the size of the aubergine bush:

Oh, and it is producing such lovely fruit; we are eating aubergine everyday right now (steamed, stir-fry, oooh and deep fried in tempura batter is yum-yum). This Black Beauty variety has a good firm texture unlike some of the other types that we have had in the past (we don’t like the spongy ones).

This is the pumpkin…it was really struggling over dry season but now it has spread over the whole bed. Unfortunately some of the newly formed fruits are rotting because of the excessive rains. I guess you can’t have it all…

We are growing air potato in one of our raised beds. They were doing nothing two weeks ago and all of a sudden, they are climbing.

Air potato is a type of yam. We rather like them because we don’t need to go digging around for them.

This is the giant bamboo at the pond; it gone absolutely wild so Gnome will be giving it a hair-cut this week. We are using some of the bamboo (they are 30 to 40 feet in length) as rafters for our new building.

Hope you are all surviving buggy time in Belize! By the way, we do have Insect Repellent products so check on The Apothecary….

Belize

Water Everywhere!!

June 27, 2017 Munchkin

When it rains, it pours!! Especially if you live down here in Toledo, Belize. These are actually pictures from last week! Surprisingly, it has dried up again(!) and it hasn’t rained for about 6 days now. Well, there was a lot of water everywhere!! Here are some pictures to show you what we mean by a lot of water…

The duckie pond in the Zen coop is full again…we were supposed to re-do this one this year but did not find the time to get to it. It is lined with thick construction plastic (which the duckies have scratched up) and then it has been lined with rocks. When it rains everyday (which happens at this time of the year) it will get completely filled up like this. As it gets drier, the water does leak out of the holes in the construction plastic so it doesn’t hold water perfectly. We’ll have to sort this one out next year.

This year the big pond did not dry up. The water is high again…but the silly geese have forgotten that it exists again…we will have to lure them here with a corn trail…

Oh, and this year it has been re-stocked with tilapia thanks to Panda. We can go fishin’ in the new year!! (Panda’s doing okay by the way…last time we talked to him (which was a few days ago) he said that he felt fresh and ready to get on with things on the farm).

These are puddles that are more like little ponds…so you can understand why we wear wellies all the time.

Okay, so we are still up to our ears in trying to finish last minute construction and the wood that we had bought (tambran) has got black mold growing on it already. We still have to keep on going…rain or shine!!

Amusing, Belize, Farming

New Goosies On The Block!!

June 26, 2017 Munchkin

This one is an update on our gosling (goosie) situation. Yes, I know that every-one has been waiting with bated breath for the next thrilling instalment (Ha-Ha!!). Our L’il Spaddled Goosie with the spaddled legs didn’t make it…it may have had other problems and it just keeled over one day and wouldn’t get up again. Rest in Peace my l’il sweet one in Goosie Heaven!!

We now have five goosies on the block and they are doing great. They are at the ugly stage at the moment (but I still think they are really adorable). Since they were getting bigger, there were over-crowding problems in piggie metropolis, so they are finally out with the duckies in the Zen coop.

The Piggies: “Phew…we can hear ourselves think again!! Yay!!”

I think the piggies are relieved now that there is some peace and quiet in their living quarters. The goosies were getting a bit too chatty and noisy…

The goosies are having a lovely time. Here are some pictures…

I am getting them used to eating all sorts of things so that they can forage once they get out into the “real world” of the farm. Right now, I am throwing succulent mombassa grass, mango peels and food scraps at them. They also get protein rations in the form of puppy food.

This is an old picture when they were all wee…

Now look at them….

They are starting to feather:

Goosies by the pond:

Once they are fully feathered we will let them out. Meanwhile we will keep them safe inside the coop.

Casa Mascia Apothecary