Cassava cake is a local sweet made in Belize which is made from grated cassava, sugar and spices which may include cinnamon and nutmeg. It is mostly made in the Garifuna households in Belize and everyone has their own special recipe. Fortunately for people like me, who don’t have a secret recipe, I have found a wonderful shop-bought version of the cassava cake in Belize. This cake is baked at the cassava factory in Dangriga. I don’t tend to buy much shop-bought food but I actually find this cake very palatable and the smooth, non-grainy texture of this cooked root is very pleasant. I can not taste any spices in this cake but nevertheless, I think it is still very tasty.
I always like to convert sweet things into savoury and this recipe is a fine example of this:
These kebabs are made from fried cassava cake pieces, fried pieces of spicy sausage and bits of fresh pineapple. They are so yummy; the sweetness of the cake contrasts with the spicy sausage and compliments the pineapple.
If you read our posts regularly, you may have noticed that we don’t tend to eat out. This is mostly because we eat the best food at home and we have our own fresh vegetables, hand-picked on the same day. On rare occasions, we will eat out in order to “do something different.”
The other day, we visited Coleman’s Cafe in Big Falls to have lunch. The usual Belizean food fare includes rice and beans, plain rice with stewed beans, chicken/pork/beef stewed in local spices and herbs. The usual side of “vegetables” is coleslaw; in this particular food place, you can sometimes get callaloo which is a local green leafy vegetable.
This time, we were fortunate enough to have stewed gibnut on the menu. Gibnut is paca, a ground-dwelling hebivorous large rodent which can usually weigh up to about 20lbs (10kg) ; they taste like suckling pig. Their meat is prized in this country fetching a high price at about $8 per pound (compare this to local beef at $4 per pound). Of course, we love it; in fact, I would say that it is actually my favourite meat.
Stewed Gibnut.
The herbs and spices used in these stews usually include yellow ginger (tumeric), dried powdered chilli, cilantro or culantro and recado.
Tumeric and Chilli Powder.
Recado is available in powdered form or in blocks and contain the following spices: annatto, local oregano, cumin, clove, cinnamon, black pepper, allspice, garlic, and salt. The annato gives it the red colour.
Recado Powder.
At the cafe, they also had cohune cabbage, which is heart of palm (cohune palm) cooked in yellow ginger (tumeric). This is considered celebration food as is usually served at parties and weddings.
Cohune Cabbage.
For us, it is nice to eat out now and then. In Belize, there is certainly a “eating out” culture in which the locals eat out for lunch every day. This is why all Government offices close at noon, on the dot, so that all the workers can eat out en masse! Salaried workers also buy their dinner as a “take out.” The usual stuff is rice, beans and some meat and there is very little deviation from this. Despite the lack of choice, everybody seems to be quite content with this food. There are of course, Chinese restaurants in Punta Gorda which compete with this local food. A popular choice among the locals is chow mein (if they are splurging out or trying to impress a girlfriend) or fried chicken , which has gained the reputation, in Belize, of being “Chiney Food.”
Ok, guys have a cool Saturday night and if you are eating out for dinner tonight, have a good one!!
A few weeks back when we were travelling on the highway from Belize City to Belmopan, this is what happened:
Sharp Eyes.
Gnome: Oooooh look…broom corn!
This picture makes it look deceptively big but when you are travelling in a vehicle at 110kph, everything looks green and blurry. Gnome managed to spot a wild edible with his sharp eyes! This is also funny because he has recently complained of eyesight problems and thinks that he requires a new prescription for his spectacles. Anyway, he screeched to a halt and then did a U-turn to bring us back round to the corn. I didn’t get a chance to say anything, because it all happened so quickly.
He jumped out of the car to grab a specimen for seeds.
Broom Corn.
In the usual Gnome style, he attemped to procure a plant to take back to the farm. You can just imagine what all the drivers were thinking as they zoomed by on the highway, catching a glimpse of Gnome on his hands and knees, digging a plant out from the ground!
Pulling Up Broom Corn.
Broom corn is Sorghum bicolor and is also commonly known as sorghum. It is a grass species which is cultivated for its grain. The grain can be used to make breads and can be popped like “pop-corn.” In large scale cultivation, it can be a source of ethanol fuel and sorghum syrup. Also, you can make brooms out of them hence the popular name. It can be used to feed animals and guinea pigs are rather fond of this type of grass.
Well, in our usual Munchkin and Gnome Style, we were both rather chuffed with ourselves for finding such a useful plant on the highway in Belize. It just goes to show that you need to be on the look out all the time if you are a serious forager!! Just drive safely while you do it!
I was harvesting bird chilli peppers today to dry out in the sun. It is hot and dry again. These come up as voluntary plants everywhere because the birds eat them and poop the seeds out. I like these chilli peppers so I usually let these plants come up opportunistically; these plants can grow into considerable bushes and I have at least a dozen of them scattered around the yard.
Bird Chilli Pepper.
Well, the running joke, on the farm, is that the birds get them all because I never actually get round to harvesting any of them. Gnome says that one day when we finally have our 4 and 20 blackbird pie, they will be very hot and spicy!
In order to put an end to the joke (it is after all at my expense) I took the time to pick some of the peppers; I probably picked close to 1000 and that wasn’t even half of them!
Whilst I was picking them, I realised that all the Munchkin jobs involved food in some way or another. On the farm, I am in charge of food harvesting, preservation, preparation and cooking. It is quite a job because it is ongoing and if you slack off, fruit and vegetables get wasted and fall to the ground.
Yesterday, I prepared another jackfruit “baby”…believe me, this is no mean feat when you have to wrestle with such a heavy fruit with all the latex and goo sticking onto the knife and hands! The jackfruit dried beautifully into very sweet, aromatic chips.
Jackfruit Baby.
More Munchkin jobs coming up:
Picking of Chinese Jujube; these are green fruit about the size of small plums. When they turn yellow-green, they are ready to pick and at this point, have the consistency and crispness of Granny Smith apples. When they are fully mature, they actually turn red and shrivel up like prunes. This is a version of the Chinese red date, which can be purchased at Chinese supermarkets. This year I will have my own to cook in savoury and sweet soups.
Bamboo Shoot Starting.
Oh, and yes we have bamboo shoots coming up. These will be ready in about a week. It sounds like fun when you are reading it off my blog but in actual fact, it is a whole sweaty morning of cutting, slicing and boiling. You really have to be dedicated to food to do all of this!
Munchkin and Grapes.
It is all indeed a labour of love. If I didn’t love cooking and eating so much, I honestly would not do all of this. For any people out there who dream of a self-sustainable farming existence, they need to first of all, ask themselves if they are prepared to spend at least 50% of their day planting, weeding, harvesting, preserving and preparing food. Because that is all it is about. When I first moved to Belize, there were a number of couples who also bought farms and wanted to grow their own food to some extent. One couple, who had more resources than us, even got a digger to mound up 5 feet high garden rows to grow vegetables. Their idea worked wonders and they had tonnes of vegetables…the only problem was that neither of them were willing to pick or cook any of them. At the time, one of them had remarked,
“…do you know what this place (Punta Gorda) really needs? Yes, we need a “Drive Through” so that we can just pick up our meals…in and out…without having to wait around…”
This was a serious comment but nevertheless, I found it hilarious and I still to this very day, it makes me chuckle. For me, the fact that there was no “Drive Through” was one of the reasons why I came to Belize!
In the end, they gave up on the garden idea and now mostly buy all the food in, despite having all the space and resources to plant their own food.
The lesson to be learned here is to realise your own real motivations and predilections because that is your real push to do things. Also, subsistence farming does not make you rich so if you are chasing the bucks, don’t even consider this type of living. If you are looking for food security and independence, then you might think about this as a worthwhile option.
Hi Everyone!! We are back. The truck has brand new universal joints so it no longer makes that funny creaking noise at the back. We feel so much better for not hearing the truck groan and complain! We had a much nicer time once we started on the road again, driving down the Southern Highway, away from Belize City.
We stopped at the Taiwanese Store, outside of Belize City. Everytime, I go there, I always point at things in a curious way and ask the owners what they are and how to cook them. This is because a lot of food is not labelled or labelled in Chinese only. This time, the owners were having lunch and offered to share some of it with us.
Our Taiwanese Friends.
We were most honoured by their generosity, and as we ate, the lady pointed to the various food packets and condiments to explain to me the ingredients which she had used. In typical Chinese teaching fashion (this is how I learned to cook from my mum), they told me to taste the dishes so that I could mimic the flavours through memory.
The Taiwanese couple are vegetarian so most of their food is soya-based (bean curd mostly) with plenty of fresh greens and vegetables and rice as the staple, of course. In this instance, they used dehydrated beancurd as a main protein source, in different sizes, to give various textures and consistency. The greens that they were eating were sweet potato greens. They also cooked some of their own fresh bamboo shoots. The food was delicious and had the taste of home-cooked Chinese fare. The couple was also rather impressed by Gnome’s use of chopsticks and general Chinese etiquette (Gnome, the Chinese Wannabee).
Taiwanese Food For Lunch.
Here are the various types of dehydrated tofu. I will write more about these in another post. The different shapes and sizes give the appearances of different cuts of meat. For instance, the small stringy ones mimic the consistency of minced (ground) meat. I never considered being a vegetarian before this but I could definitely handle eating this food everyday.
Different Types of Dried Tofu.
I spotted some dried Lion’s Mane Mushrooms, Hericium erinaceus; also known as Monkey Heads. This one will have a future post, I promise you!
Monkey Head Mushroom.
Anyway, back on the road, there were road works on the Highway from Belize City to Belmopan. There was even road congestion and a small traffic jam in Belmopan (wow…never seen before…the country is developing).
Road Works in Belmopan.
There were numerous police stops presumably because the country is on nationwide alert for the wanted man, El Chapo (the “notorious Kingpin”), who recently escaped from a Mexican prison by digging a one mile tunnel out to escape. Sounds like something out of a movie, doesn’t it?
We used “Rabbit Ears” mostly as our hailing signal on the road. Protection to All!
Rabbit Ears. Hailing In Belize.
Homeward bound, we saw a veritable bounty of white goods on a pick-up truck. One Fridge, One Freezer, 2 Mattresses and an Amoire. What an auspicious find.
Super Bonus Pick-up.
Once we hit the Toledo, the road was definitely quieter with no police stops within the district. Definitely the “Forgotten District.”
A couple of weeks ago, Gnome was doing “Secret Gnome Stuff.” It was some sort of mound of cardboard, rotten grass and chocolate trash. He also declared that the Munchkin was not permitted to sniff around this top-secret Gnome business.
Secret Gnome Business.
This week, it was unveiled!! Gnome had timed it perfectly to coincide with my Birthday week.
Paddy Straw Mushroom Peeking Out of Cardboard.More Paddy Straw Mushrooms Starting.More Paddy Straw Mushrooms.
Da Gnome does it again…he has managed to grow a mound of paddy straw mushrooms. What a wonderful gift for a Munchkin…I feel so privileged!!
Gnome Magic!
Also, Gnome is working on lacquering a gourd for me, which I will use as a water container. In the usual typical Gnome-obsessive fashion, he says that he is going to lacquer the gourd a total of fifty times to give it a perfect, finished appearance (plus he wants it to last forever!).
Half Prepared Gourd.
Also, he has decided to make a whole range of “Gnome Ware” dinner ware, made out of gourds as ongoing gifts for me. Wow…what a blessed gesture! After the water gourd, he will start on the miso bowls.
Between the two of us, 172 bananas in this huge bunch, is quite a bit to get through.
Bunch of Green Bananas.
This bunch was so heavy that it broke off the tree and we found it on the ground on Saturday morning. If you want to eat green bananas, you have to start eating them quickly, or else they start ripening within 7 days.
Luckily, the weather has been hot and dry this week, so I have been able to process the bananas for sun-drying.
This is what I have been doing the last three days. I have been grating them with this neat grater that I found in the Taiwanese store near Belize City.
Grating Green Banana.
The grated bananas just need a full 8 hours in the sun to dry completely. I have been processing 50 bananas a day which fills up a gallon jar once dried.
Fifty Dried Green Bananas.
So, by the end of today, I will have three gallon jars of dried banana. In my experience, each jar is equivalent to 20 meals and so in total, I have 60 meals in all. That is what I call food security!
Dried banana can be re-hydrated to make porridge, rostis, fritters, fillers for sausages, vegetarian bean burgers and much much more. Furthermore, this dehydrated stuff can be ground into fine flour for making breads, biscuits and pastries. This dry form is so versatile! I will post up recipes as I start cooking with it.
One last thing…this big bunch of bananas would retail at about $20 (USD$10) in this country. $20 gets you two meals of rice and beans with stewed chicken, which is typical Belizean food fare. To me, it really makes a lot more sense to go through the extra labour of processing the food so that I can get 60 meals out of it all. It’s also a labour of love…home-cooked food is always the best!
I used the local spices Tumeric and Chilli Powder (bought from Punta Gorda market, Toledo) to flavour the dish.
Tumeric and Chilli Powder.
We had a yummy Sunday Brunch with these bananas:
Tuna and Avocado with Pan-Fried Green Banana.
This is a great way to eat unripe bananas; they make a hearty and satisfying food. Definitely a tasty way to chomp your way through bananas especially when you have 172 of them!!
Hello there every-one!! Hope you are having a good day. Today, I have two miso tastings from the time when we “were mad about the beans” and made buckets and buckets of home-made miso.
The Shiro Miso: has a higher proportion of white rice to bean (we used blackbeans instead of soya beans since we live in Belize). We have actually been eating through our supply for the last month or so and I was afraid that I would munch my way through it all without doing some proper feed-back.
Shiro Miso.Shiro Miso Ready to Eat.
Shiro Miso Tasting:
Gnome says: overall, it is a light fermentation product; will continue to build complexity with aging. Less salty, sweet and mild tasting.
Munchkin says: I have used the shiro miso in soups, marinating of meat and to flavour pot roasts. All flavour packets have been replaced with a dollop of shiro miso (in fact, we have ramen noodles with this miso). It is so mild tasting, you need a whole tablespoon in a bowl of miso soup.
Hatcho Miso with Beef Jerky: Miso made from bean (blackbean) koji alone. We also added beef jerky and black pepper to make it into “Meat Lover’s” Miso.
Meat Lover’s Hatcho Miso.Meat Lovers Miso.
Meat Lover’s Miso Tasting:
Gnome says: Obviously needs more time to develop but at this stage, still very, very tasty. Has strong mushroom overtones with meat undertones. Can do with more black pepper. Will certainly reach an exquisite taste and will peak in ten years or so. A true masterpiece that has to be waited for.
Munchkin says: Beefy!! Let’s start eating it!! Yum. So rich and creamy. This miso has such intensity of taste, you only need one teaspoon to make a bowl of miso soup.
There is nothing like home-made miso…you can’t buy it for love nor money!!
THIS IS A PAID ADVERT!!!
TOMORROW, ONLY ON MGNEWS PRIMETIME SUNDAY.
WE WILL BE ANNOUNCING THE CANDIDATES FOR THE MAYORAL ELECTIONS 2015, PARADISE PASTURES.
Yay…It is a craboo season! Gnome and I relish this time when we can sit together and polish off a huge bowl of this delightful fruit together…day after day until the season finishes.
We have some of these craboo trees (Byrosonima crassifolia) growing voluntarily on our land. The fruits are not mature yet, still at a small green stage. We have to keep a keen eye on them because the blackbirds (Carib Grackles) are scoffing off all our fruit (both unripe and ripe) as if there is no tomorrow. The cheeky buggers!!
Green Craboo on Tree.
Anyway, the taste of craboo fruit is like no other. They are red or yellow in colour, round and soft. The flesh is white and has a distinct unctuous cheese-like fragrance with a background of mild sweetness. They are truly umami and it is a wonderful taste experience.
To get the most of the craboo fruit, they require fermentation in plastic bags for a few days (1 to 3 days depending on the degree of fragrant cheesy flavour you would prefer).
Dallah Bags of Craboo from Market.
A few years ago, we were given a handy tip by a Belizean who recommended that we placed our craboo fruit inside the car to allow maximal ripening of the fruit. So, you can recognise a true craboo connoisseur if they have bags of craboo sweating away in their car and they are totally non-plussed by the cheesy odour emitting from inside the vehicle.
Fermenting Craboo in Car.
So far, we have not found any fellow ex-pats who share our love for this unusual tasting fruit. The locals all seem to have the same feverish enthusiasm as us…I have seen Mayans buy ten bags at a time at the market. I have seen the way their eyes ogle at the fruit as they labouriously go through the bags of fruit, looking for the ripest ones. The job of finding the best tasting bags of fruit, becomes an obsessive task. I know this because I stand side by side with all these Mayans man-handling the bags of fruit as we vocalise our anticipation with “ooohs” and “aaahhs” and smile knowingly at each other. I feel that I have been initiated into an esoteric, sacred custom of Belize! Gnome says that liking craboo should mean that you have graduated successfully into a fellow local Belizean. It is a well-known fact that it is extremely difficult to get Belizean residency in this country…and there is apparently no logical system to follow in order to gain this status. Gnome has suggested that a bowl of craboo should be placed in front of applicants; if they are seen to be eating craboo fruit with great gusto like a local person, then they should be granted the Belizean status! Knowing all the expats down here in Toledo, I would say that, given this test, they would all be leaving en masse!
Cassava cake is a local sweet made in Belize which is made from grated cassava, sugar and spices which may include cinnamon and nutmeg. It is mostly made in the Garifuna households in Belize and everyone has their own special recipe. Fortunately for people like me, who don’t have a secret recipe, I have found a wonderful shop-bought version of the cassava cake in Belize. This cake is baked at the cassava factory in Dangriga. I don’t tend to buy much shop-bought food but I actually find this cake very palatable and the smooth, non-grainy texture of this cooked root is very pleasant. I can not taste any spices in this cake but nevertheless, I think it is still very tasty.
