Oh, I can not believe that I forgot to mention that we had found a puffball mushroom whilst on our travels the last few days. We had just driven up to the Taiwanese shop and the next thing I knew, Gnome had scrambled out quickly and was on his hands and knees in the grassy field beside the car-park.
He was so excited because he had spotted a puff-ball mushroom. These are edible and some of them can get to the size of footballs. We have never had the pleasure of eating one but apparently you can slice them and cook them like steaks.
Ripe Puffball.
We took this specimen back to the farm and Gnome stomped all over it on the grass to disperse the spores. Hope to have puffball steak sometime soon!!
Hi there!! Here are some more pictures from our adventures through Belize. As promised, here are some pictures from the Anime convention held by the Japanese Embassy in Belize.
Cosplay Contest:
Cosplay Contest in Belize.
The Japanese Embassy entertained with music, songs and dancing on the stage. And of course interspersed with Anime: Negadon: The Monster From Mars, SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers and Komaneko- The Curious Cat. They also had various booths to display information on Japanese culture. Here is the calligraphy booth:
Calligraphy Booth.
We stayed at the Best Western Biltmore Plaza for the night. We were pleasantly surprised and found that it had a colonial, Caribbean feel to the place despite being located in the middle of a busy city.
Biltmore Plaza.
Back in the hotel room, after a 3 hour drive to Belize City and attendance at the Anime convention for about 4 hours, Gnome took his boots off finally. Out of one boot, a frog popped out!
Tree Frog.
Gnome certainly insisted on taking part of the farm with him! He said that he thought that he felt something wet in his shoe…he did not realise that he was accommodating a frog and so was somewhat relieved to find a benign cause for his slimey foot.
Relieved Gnome.
The frog stayed in the room with us and in the middle of the night jumped onto Gnome’s face. It jumped and boinged quite happily in the dark attending to mosquito control. In the morning, we found him asleep in the toilet.
This morning, we went to the Belize City public hospital, KHMH to pay our medical licences. The Medical Board of Belize have implemented a new policy with payment whereby the money has to be paid into their bank account. Then you have to travel all the way to KHMH in Belize City to present your bank deposit slip to them. This year they have also started issuing annual licences to doctors once payment has been fulfilled. Presumably they are for framing in the doctor’s clinic. In our case, they will be hung up in the barn.
KHMH.
After the hospital visit, we stopped by the Taiwanese shop to pick up some Chinese goodies. We had some refreshments…
Drink From Taiwanese Shop.
I can not read Chinese so I don’t actually know what we drank. It tasted like soya milk with hints of strawberry. Check out the picture…it seems to suggest the promise of love? Some feminine love potion drink? I felt a bit giddy with love for my darling Gnome afterwards…so, maybe it worked!!
It was a lovely drive with blue skies:
Maya Mountains in Belize.
We even managed to squeeze in a visit to Lost Reef to meet up with friends:
Our Happy Friend…She DOES look like this!!Our Friends. And yes, he looks like that too!!Lost Reef.
Homeward bound. We took the frog back home with us too!!
This morning I was full of woes again and being a general pain in the butt. So, my gallant gnome said to me,” Pack your bags Munchkin! We are going to the Big City!”
Off to Belize City on a whim:
We attended an Anime Convention hosted by the Japanese Embassy; will post pictures tomorrow. We didn’t enter the cosplay competition, by the way. Maybe next year I will have my Ninja-Munchkin costume…
The aftermath of official Flood Flies Day is a scene of horror and devastation. There are a few live crawling insects here and there in a background of millions of wings. Not only are they are they on the table-tops, cupboards and floor but they have managed to crawl into every single crevice imaginable. There are wings stuck to food, water, jars, inside boxes and just about everything! They have left no stone unturned in their mass awakening and have truly done their job in destroying all hope of homely, pristine comfort. Instead they have created a chaotic, maddening mess.
Gnome is casually ignoring my nervous twitch and passing it off as amorous winking in his direction (he should be so lucky).
I am trying to reclaim my territories bit by bit and it is a real battle. To add to all this, there was a power-cut at 10am this morning. I had a picture in my head of all the 1000 Watt vacuum cleaners going off at the same time and all the women in Punta Gorda having a massive Post Flood Flies Freak Out (PFFFO!).
This event makes you think that man’s dominance over the environment is precarious at best.
There are millions of them and I am not exaggerating. They are swarming and surrounding our house and getting into every nook and cranny to invade us. This is the biggest Flood Flies day we have seen and we have been here every year for the last 10 years.
Flood Flies.
They keep on coming:
More Flood Flies.
As I write, they are crawling all over us, down the shirts and down the trousers. Ugghh…I dislike (using a very light term) that creepy crawly feeling. There are masses collecting around all the lights, flying amock and dropping their wings.
I am worried about the mess of wings in the morning.
All Gnome is worried about is the mass of protein that he did not catch this time to eat.
What a funny world we live in…each to his own worry!
This is the nuptial flight of the termites which like to eat wood and cellulose. I take back my words, in a previous post, when I said that this day only occurred in May. It can occur in June too! Beware of termites if you live in a wooden house (like we do); they can literally eat you out of house and home.
A ripe mamey sapote is soft to the touch when you press hard with thumb and fore-finger. Cut around the shell lengthwise (like an avocado) to obtain the two halves of the fruit with a central large seed. Remove the seed and spoon out the pulp to eat. The flesh should come off easily in a ripe fruit. You can eat this fruit out of hand or you can transform it into a savoury burger meal:
Maney Sapote Beef Burgers.
This is a unique and tasty way of eating this tropical fruit. Mamey sapote has a reddish-brown, smooth and creamy flesh with a sweet flavour reminiscent of caramelised brown sugar. This marries very well with beef giving a caramel velvetiness to the ubiquitous burger.
It has been two months since we made our Good Friday Shiro Miso; so, I reckoned it was time to try it out!
Shiro Miso.
Shiro miso contains a higher white rice to bean ratio, therefore it can ferment faster and be ready to eat in 2 months. Compare this to hatcho miso which is only made of fermented beans which takes at least 12 months to mature.
I also had a huge pumpkin (14lbs/7kg) in weight, just waiting to be eaten:
After eating this, we both agreed that the miso was ready to eat…it gave a unique umami savoury taste to the dish. What a treat and the miso and pumpkin are fresh from our farm!
Ground-breaking News in the world of Stingless-bee Beekeeping: Today was a good day to check on the bees. Unfortunately my last transfer was not successful (bringing my success rate to a ridiculous 50%) and it was time to clean the dead hive and make some improvements for another transfer.
Dead Brood Comb in the Brood Chamber.Dead, Rotting Brood Removed.
After cleaning and disinfecting the hive I added some improvements to deal with the cause(s) of this problem: parasitic fly and too much space. Number One: Seal the hive with beeswax. No excuse for this really…it has been laziness on my part.
Sealing up the Hive Parts with Beeswax.
And Number Two: Bypass the honey pot chamber for three to six months (maybe longer) until the bees have completely taken over the brood chamber using blocks of wood that fit together in such a way that they only leave a small passage through the honey chamber.
Blocks of Wood Bypassing the Honey Chamber.
To commemorate this simple hive, I have called it the Gnome Mark III Stingless-bee Bee Hive. The previous UTOB Hive ended up having two established colonies (again), one in the honey chamber and one in the brood chamber.
Brood in the Honey Chamber (again).
This is what I transferred into the new GM III hive today.
We were quietly having our morning tea with the sound of continuous rain beating down on our roof and the rabble of the early morning birds, when we were suddenly startled by the sound of the phone going off. It was 7am…from past experience, we only received early phone calls for medical call-outs. I picked up the phone and I recognised the voice of a guy that I knew from Punta Gorda. He was obviously very agitated and addressed me formerly as “doctor.” In my mind, I was thinking,” Yup…it’s a medical call.” Then he garbled on about trying frantically to find my phone number on the Internet. I acknowledged his efforts with some sort of noise indicating encouragement as I anticipated an ailment.
And, then out of the blue he blurted out,” I think I found a Stinkhorn Mushroom!”
I blanked out. Blinked twice. Brain activity stopped for a millisecond as I processed this statement.
I glanced up at the clock…it was 7.05am. In my mind I was thinking,” This guy is phoning me at 7 in the morning to tell me that he has spotted a mushroom in town?”
I don’t think that he even realised that I was taken aback by his statement and went into a frenzy with a description about a potrusion and a net-like thing. He enthusiastically asked,”which part can you eat?” and, “how do I cook it?” and, “Oh, do the Chinese like to eat it…yes I ‘ve heard it’s rather gelatinous…”
I quickly recovered from my surprise and politely corroborated with his description of the Stinkhorn, giving him helpful pointers on the harvesting of the edible mushroom. Afterwards, I put the phone down calmly and then guffawed silently at Gnome who had heard the whole conversation.
Gnome shrugged his shoulders and said nonchalantly, “I guess this is the emergency mushroom hot-line.”
Interestingly enough, in the last few days we have had many sightings of the Stinkhorn Mushroom on our farm. Here are some pictures of this unusual looking fungus.
Stinkhorn Mushroom.Double Stinkhorn Mushroom.
If you would like to read more about this mushroom, Gnome has written an engaging and humourous essay in the library on The Stinkhorn.
Gnome’s last words before he went to sleep last night were, ” I intend to work all day tomorrow.”
Activation Sequence: Positive Sod’s Law.
And sure enough, it poured down today so no outside activity was possible. In a funny sort of way, we were trying out a new technique which we have coined “Positive Sod’s Law.” This utilises a statement of intention, the Sod’s Law principle and the fact that the final result is what you inadvertently wanted but managed to get through the convoluted channel of a “Sod.”
Anyway, since the well-pump has “done broke” as they would say here in Belize, we have been on water conservation “red alert.” This simply means that we are on bucket washes.
On a typical “Red Alert Day” we use the following amounts of water:
1) Bucket washes limited to 3 x day each; 30 gallons in total (120 litres).
2) Washing Clothes; 20 gallons (80 litres).
3) Washing dishes; 10 gallons (40 litres).
4) Water for consumption; 5 gallons (20 litres).
5) Miscellaneous; 5 gallons (20 litres).
Total water used up in one day is 70 gallons (about 280 litres as an over estimation).
We have two rain water tanks that store 660 gallons so that each tank gives us about 8 to 9 days of water. This means, we can last about 2 weeks of dry weather before we start on the “Positive Sod’s Law” technique. This is assuming that we get our water tanks filled right up to the top after each rain…this is not usually the case…more the case of one full tank.
Anyway, it rained lots today and the distant rumbling of thunder, grey clouds and flood flies indicate that there is more to come.
Flood Flies.
We are anticipating the invasion of the termite queens (the nuptial flight) in the house so we are getting ready for an early night. This equates to a mass of crawling termites and wings a-plenty. Just another Manic Monday!!
Oh, I can not believe that I forgot to mention that we had found a puffball mushroom whilst on our travels the last few days. We had just driven up to the Taiwanese shop and the next thing I knew, Gnome had scrambled out quickly and was on his hands and knees in the grassy field beside the car-park.
He was so excited because he had spotted a puff-ball mushroom. These are edible and some of them can get to the size of footballs. We have never had the pleasure of eating one but apparently you can slice them and cook them like steaks.
