Category Archives: Belize

Sting-Done-Gone!!

September 10, 2017 Munchkin 2 Comments

I wanted to share this with you since it actually happened about 30 minutes ago. I was on the veranda moving paper bricks and I got an almighty, awful sting from a scorpion. It really caught me by surprise because I had just reached my hand out to grab a brick and it must have been hiding behind it. I gave such an almighty scream that even my cat woke up from his dreamy Sunday nap. He promptly fell asleep again once he saw me jumping about like a mad maniac…hmmm, he must think that this is a normal state for me…

Anyway, I didn’t want to be a woose and call Gnome (emergency doc) for a scorpion bite so I ran into the house to see what I could do myself. Yesterday, I had been bottling our Itch Done Gone (insect bite relief) product and since it was readily available, I grabbed some of that.

This is what I did: I dumped a bottle (10mls) of Itch Done Gone, about a 1/4 cup of baking soda, filled the jug up to about 500mls (1/2 quart) with water and stuck my hand in it.

Ahhhh relief…the copal (a natural anti-inflammatory) together with the camphor in the Itch Done Gone cooled down the inflammation and my hand stopped throbbing with the pain. I left my hand in it for about 5 minutes…I would recommend longer (like half an hour to get the full benefits).

My personal thoughts on using this concoction as a scorpion sting remedy: this time round, the area that was stung, did not swell up as much as much as previous times (when no remedy was used). I felt subjectively that although it did not take away the pain entirely, that the pain was lessened in intensity and duration.

Interestingly enough, I have been told by other people that they have used Itch Done Gone for scorpion bites with good results. I’ve been told that they apply it directly onto the affected areas. My use of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) was derived from the knowledge that it is used in allergic reactions such as poison ivy to help with itch relief. According to Gnome’s logic, immunological responses tend to set up an acidic environment so the logic in using sodium bicarbonate is to alkalinize the environment; possibly if there are any acidic components to the venom, they might get neutralised.

My recommendations: I think that a bottle of Itch Done Gone should be an essential in everybody’s first aid kit. Not only is it effective in relieving the itch and inflammation of insect bites, you can also use it in scorpion stings. If you are interested in this product please click on this link: Itch Done Gone in Casa Mascia Apothecary.

Belize, Blog

Phew…Back On-Line!!

September 5, 2017 Munchkin

Hello…we have Internet back on after a week off-line and nothing has changed. Gnome said, “Nobody bothers writing emails anyway.” And sure enough, I’ve checked the mail and there were 42 junk emails. Anyway, it all started with a bad storm last Wednesday evening which resulted in our transformer blowing out. By the time electricity was restored, it was Friday so it was near enough to the weekend…and we all know nothing happens at the weekend here, so we called to get our Internet fixed on Monday.

Even before all of that happened, we have been experiencing computer woes. The power cable for our computer crapped out (after a thunderstorm and a brief power-cut) and then the computer shut down before we even knew what had happened. We did not get a chance to back up the hard-drive so I’ll need some time to retrieve my passwords for administrative websites. Oh, and the printer doesn’t seen to recognise this temporary computer so we can’t print our business labels out. Hmmm…somebody once told me that when you get electrical problems, it’s because Mercury is in retrograde (something like that). Let’s all hope (cross our fingers) that Mercury is moving forward again!!

Belize, Farming, Food

Where Does The Time Go?

August 23, 2017 Munchkin

We are soooo busy we haven’t had time to write. I am either doing something (so can’t be at the computer) or doing nothing (so can’t be bothered because I’m too tired). It’s either 1 or 0 at the moment! Gnome is getting better from his shoulder injury so I’ve got him on “light duties” right now. This still entails moving wheel-barrows of dirt and filling up new vegetable beds. We are dismantling the current piggie beds which are full of wonderful mulch and building new temporary homes for them. It in other words, we have rotational concrete “pastures” for the piggies; the piggies are fed grass and all things nice, they poop and do their thing for 3 months, we then move them along to another home and grow vegetables in the old home. So on and so forth….the piggies are doing their job on the farm! Piggie mulch is fantastic; the earth is black, black, black and there are fat worms wiggling about everywhere!

My lovely Piggies:

So, I’ve got a whole load of seedlings ready including tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, kale, endives and fennel.

I’ll try and write more this week!!

Belize, Farming

What’s Happenin’?

August 15, 2017 Munchkin 2 Comments

Hello Everyone!! As a follow up from the frustrating iguana story, I thank you all for your advice to eat them. We were actually going to do this but not mention it in our blog as we thought that it would sound politically incorrect. Anyway(s), watch this space for iguana curry!

Well what’s been happenin’? Gnome is temporarily out of action…again! He was lifting and pushing zinc roofing into place yesterday and he has accidentally torn a ligament…in the left scapula region. He said,

“My shoulder blade feels so unstable, it feels like it’s popped out of place!”

I examined him thoroughly and reassured him that the injury was not too severe but he did need about two weeks rest with no heavy lifting. He wasn’t happy to hear about that!

So, no weed-wacking, no construction, no nothin’ for Gnome right now. He’s going to drive me crazy…Ha-Ha!!

Anyway, I haven’t been writing so much but we’ve been doing our usual squirrelling around the farm. Both can’t keep still!! We’ve been doing regular canning lately and have amassed a respectable amount of jars in our pantry. We have another 38 jars of lentils and 34 jars of beef stew. Oh, and some beef broth too. More food hoarding!! Yippee!!

The duckies have been laying but we haven’t been able to keep up with eating the eggs so I’ve started salting the eggs (Chinese style). You might know the salted duck egg yolks from Chinese mooncake. We’ll going to have about 50 of them!

Since I am talking about food preservation, I will end with a big jar of craboo that we have pickled in vinegar with jalapeños.

Yes, it’s craboo season again and the only people who love this stuff are the Belizeans, Gnome and Munchkin. Anyone born outside of Belize, refuse to touch this stuff because they think it’s tastes cheesy, in a bad way. We think it tastes cheesy in a good way…it is after all, best eaten after fermenting in a plastic bag for a few days. According to local tradition, the best method to get the craboo to ripen is to place in a car for a few days to bake in the heat of the sun.

Enjoy craboo season while it lasts!!

Belize, Farming, Plants

The Trouble With Iguanas.

August 11, 2017 Munchkin 4 Comments

I used to think that iguanas were cute and all things nice. Not any more!! They have eaten every single vegetable in my garden.. I am soooo mad. The pumpkin patch that we planted on a bed produced so much this year and we didn’t get a single vegetable. I tried putting gloves over the young fruit to disguise them but lo and behold, they crawled into the gloves and munched away.

All the young fruits are disappearing on my aubergines.

Yesterday I spotted a baby iguana sitting at my Indian cucumber vine, all bloated and sleepy from feasting on my vegetables. Hey, that’s not fair!!

Yesterday, I declared war on the iguanas,

“Munchkin is going to war against the iguanas.”

No more nice Munchkin; I am very, very upset. My first course of action is repellent sprays. I read on the Internet that you can spray on your prized vegetables a concoction of habanero peppers and garlic. Gnome also mentioned that I should try spraying sulphur….he said that generally speaking, most creatures don’t like sulphur sprayed thickly on their vegetables!

This is war!! Dear Mr/Mrs Iguana, please would you kindly re-locate. You are not welcome here!! This is a very polite warning…

Amusing, Belize, Farming

Houdini Duckie!!

August 4, 2017 Munchkin

Phew…what a sweat fest it has been for the last week. I have been walking about with a sore head from all the heat. Today is a blessing with morning rains and marked coolness. Oh lovely!! So, the headache was definitely due to the heat.

Another silly Duckie Tale!! About 6 months ago, we bought a new lot of fowl from a neighbour; this included a pair of geese and a pair of turkeys (The Overlord and the Duchess). The neighbour was trying to off load her fowl because her dogs were attacking them and she felt sad that they had to kept in a protected coop all the time. She threw in a duckie as a freebie since it was all alone and she had lost her drake partner to the dog.

At that point, when this new duckie joined us we had 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 duckies. After about 2 to 3 weeks, I kept on counting 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 duckies. This was back when the ducks had total free range of the entire farm and could come and go as they pleased. They were herded into the coop at night. Some days I would count 8 ducks as they trooped into the coop for their daily corn ration. Other days there would be 6 ducks so I reckoned that some of them wanted to stay out and I felt that having independant ducks was okay at that time. During the last 6 months our duckie rearing practices have changed because they were laying eggs haphazardly all over the farm. Most of the time the dogs were getting them. We decided to keep them for a short while in the guinea pig houses. When we made this change, we had 7 duckies and I could not find number 8 (the new recruit). We looked everywhere and gave her up as lost.

So, we had 7 ducks definitely for a while. Four months ago, we let them all out in the confines of the duck coop (aka zen garden). After a while, there were 6 ducks. No idea what happened to that one. Then there were 5 ducks (snake?)…then, definitely 4 by the end of the boa incident. So, I’ve been counting 4 for about 6 weeks now. I need to remind you at this point that the coop is now sealed so the ducks can’t get in or out of it.

Last night I counted 1-2-3-4…5!!

Where did the fifth one come from??? It just appeared from nowhere and joined the usual food fight in the evening like she had always been there. She is really skinny and she looks like the new duckie that we gave up for lost about 6 months ago.

We have no idea where she came from and what she has been doing all this time. Gnome reckons that she has been hiding inside the cardamom bush in the coop all this time (setting with no eggs!) and she has been so perfectly camouflaged that we haven’t spotted her. What…for 6 months!!! Hmmmm….maybe…or she’s a magician duckie and walks through walls and coops!!

So, where have you been all this time??

(Not Telling!)

Belize, Food

A Waffly Sunday!

July 23, 2017 Munchkin

Oh, one day it’s sunny, the next day it’s raining the whole day. The weather can’t make up its mind and it’s driving us crazy! We have to make up contingency plans for rainy days now…mostly canning things in our freezer right now…chicken feet done…next we are going to make cassava miso and can black beans. We are actually almost done and will probably be retiring our old freezer this week.

Ha-Ha…now we need a bigger pantry. More jobs for Gnome to keep him busy.

Anyway, we’ve got these wonderful new cast iron waffle irons and going crazy with them. I make up the batter and then Gnome makes them on the stove.

We are having a waffly good time:

These are great; we love them because waffles can be so versatile and it’s great to chuck in all sorts of things into the batter. More about waffle mixes in a later post!!

Oh and a lovely breakfast for a Waffly Sunday (with our duckie eggs of course).

Have a lovely Sunday!!

Amusing, Belize, Construction, Farming

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:

Everything Handmade in Belize.