Category Archives: Food

March Already!!

March 5, 2019 Munchkin

March Already…what happened to January and February? Is it just me… is time going faster and faster? Anyway, we can’t turn back the time so we must proceed and keep on going. Since the mower is waiting for a part to coming whizzing its way to Belize in a few months, Gnome has decided to chain-saw and clean up the area behind our house. This is an “after” picture…look! You can actually see the mountain to the back…

What other things can I show you? We have basil coming out of our ears right now. We have about forty of these…some in pots and some in tyres around the house. I guess we need to get more tomatoes going because we like basil with tomatoes:

Oh, and this one is catnip grown especially for our lovely, lazy cat. I have read that cats go crazy for catnip. Well, not our cat!! I’ve tried giving him a few leaves and he just looks up at me like he is saying, “I don’t eat greens…where’s the meat?!”

Gnome has been chopping down some coconut palms to give more space for our mangoes and avocados. We have been eating coconut heart of palm almost everyday…there is so much of it. In my opinion, the heart of palms all taste quite similar. The commercialised one is usually from the peach palm and the main one that is eaten in Belize is the cohune palm. They all have a crunchy texture and sweet taste.

Gnome has a new modified method of baking bread: in a cast iron pot surrounded by coals in a sand pit. We both love this crusty bread and it tastes so much better than oven-baked bread.

Anyway, wishing you all a good day!!

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Farm Harvests.

February 8, 2019 Munchkin

The weather guess (forecast?) for today was “good day for lawn-mowing.” When we got up, it started raining and it proceeded to rain on and off until 10am. Gnome muttered to himself:

“….hmmm…not good day for lawn-mowing.”

The weather reports are becoming a joke with us and they are starting to appear like wild guesses that are about 90% wrong most of the time. We were thinking of reading tea leaves or getting a crystal ball instead…

We finally managed to get out mid-morning. Gnome dug holes and planted out the rest of the seedlings. We now have peach palm and jackfruit in the orchard area. I went harvesting today; It seems to be berry season right now on the farm.

The huckleberry plants seem to like the worst soil conditions. Last time I planted them in a prime spot on a bed with lovely dark soil and they hardly did anything, This time, I stuck them in the ground in thick, hard clay and they are thriving and producing well. Here are some fruits:

We have one miracle fruit bush and it is bearing so much this year. I have described this plant before; it contains a molecule that binds to your taste buds making sour things taste sweet. I find that I can’t use it all the time…there is only a certain amount of sour things you can consume in one day! Anyway, they are a pretty fruit:

This is all that I collected today. The green leaves are malabar spinach; they grow all year round and are our main greens at the moment. The orange fruits are Barbados gooseberry; I have started putting them in savoury dishes with pork…the acidity helps to balance and compliment the fattiness of the meat…very tasty!

Oh, lastly…we have a harvest of black peanut. We didn’t manage to get much this time round because there was a large tree shading the peanut area which stunted the growth and production. Nevertheless, we got enough to start a bigger patch and Gnome is very pleased with his black peanuts.

That’s it for tonight. Wishing you all a lovely weekend…there is supposed to be 6 hours of rain tomorrow…let’s wait and see!

Belize, Food, Plants

Back To Work!

February 7, 2019 Munchkin 2 Comments

Gnome has had his seven days off to recover from his neck injury and we went back to working on the farm today. He is a lot better and he was hauling heavy stuff, digging holes in the earth and moving wheel-barrows around without any problems. This is what he said to me this morning:

“…hang on a minute…why did you end up taking a week off too??”

I sort of shifted uncomfortably from side to side and stared down at my feet and replied:

“…well…I was looking after you…and it was Chinese New Year…and I wanted a week off too!”

(I thought to myself… that was plenty of reasons to take seven days off !!)

He shook his head and laughed at me.

Anyway, it started off as a grey and rainy type of day so we decided to plant our last lot of plants outside. The malibar chestnut and jackfruit have been planted in the area behind the pond.

Tomorrow we will be planting a row of peach palms in the coconut area:

These palms produce fruit that the geese love. This is another tree that they camp around hoping for fruits to fall from the sky.

We have other plants that are not quite big enough to plant outside so they will have to be cared for over the dry season. Luckily, I had the foresight to remember not to fill up the nursery over dry season this year so we only have akee, pomegranate, giant molly apple and rambutan plants. This is the Sardinian pomegranate; we have 10 ready for planting in July; Gnome’s Mother will be pleased to see these!

We have been harvesting taro which means we are eating this everyday right now; we probably have a whole sack full. This year we managed to surreptitiously plant them in places where the geese did not notice…in-between tyres and underneath trees. Beware…they have a keen eye for every edible plant!

Cleaned up and peeled, they look like this:

We had a lovely day working together and will continue to do so as it keep us fit and out of trouble!! 😉

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food

Early Jackfruit.

February 3, 2019 Munchkin 2 Comments

Hello, I am writing a bit more since we are both stuck at home. Gnome’s neck injury is getting better but as soon as he tries to do any type of lifting, the pain comes back again. I am giving him a full week and will re-assess for light activity on Wednesday. He is keeping his humour up and is reading up on silly things like Groundhog Day (which was yesterday) and asking me if I would eat a groundhog; my answer was “Yes…I am Chinese…the Chinese will eat everything!” Oh yeah, he was also looking at the protein content of millipedes to see if we could supplement our diet with it! He’s not kidding by the way…he’s also asked me to re-start the wormery as a protein source and asked me: “…how would you cook them?” and I cheekily replied with,”…Kung-po Worm! Sweet and Sour Worm, name any Chinese-Style and I will make it into a worm dish. I am of course not kidding too and will in the future post up worm dishes once I get enough of them to eat.

Talking of food…this year we have early jackfruit from a newly bearing tree. The tree is about 30 yards from the house in an area away from our normal walkways. We didn’t notice until this week when the geese stopped going to the pond in the morning. We scratched our heads and wondered what was the matter and then we saw the main goosie group camping under a jackfruit tree. Any other goose (not from their group) that happened to cross their path would get pecked and screeched at.

On closer inspection, we saw that a ripe jackfruit had fallen to the ground and head goosie was pecking at the fruit as if he was trying to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the “Fastest Time a jackfruit can be eaten by a goose in one sitting.” Then we stared up at the tree and saw four humongous jackfruit just ripe for the picking. Aha, the dastardly geese were waiting for the next one to fall down and feast upon! We managed to harvest just in time…look at these beauties:

We normally harvest jackfruit on our farm in July and August. February is very early but it is actually a better time because with the dry weather at this time of the year, they are less likely to rot and get damaged by torrential rain. Plus, this is an unusual time for fruit trees to produce so it is a welcome harvest on the farm.

Yesterday, I prepared one of the jackfruits and attempted to process it in a different way; Gnome’s mother had sent me a link where there was a very skilled person peeling the fruit in a spiral-like manner in a matter of minutes.

utube.com/Nila’s Kitchen

It was one of those videos that made it look so easy peasy! Well, I tried it and found that the jackfruit was too heavy (20lbs/ 10kgs) to manipulate in this way. I did however modify the method by cutting it into 3 inch rings and peeling the rings from the central core… then the fruit could be readily popped out like on the video. This took me less time compared to my old method…30 minutes instead of one hour so I will continue with the new improved approach. Once I am more skilled, I might be able to spiralise it and make a 2 minute video!!

Jackfruit:

Okay, I will write more since we can’t get out right now to do farm work!!

Belize, Farming, Food

Hello!

January 26, 2019 Munchkin

I think it’s been a while since I have written something; Gnome’s Mum is probably wondering what we are up to! Anyway, the weather has been very erratic; the beginning of the week looked like we were heading straight into dry season and now it’s grey and cold again. It seems unpredictable right now so we have to take each day as it comes. This week, we have been cleaning the area around the house. There were far too many trees encroaching upon us and blocking our view so Gnome chainsawed whilst I stacked the wood. After this, we will probably do a big mow around the cleared areas. There are a few more trees left to plant before it starts getting dry so we are actually hoping for some gloomy wet weather over the next few days! Ha-Ha…you would never think that I would say that…

Anyway, today we went into town (Punta Gorda) and I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of tourists. I mentioned this to someone and they said that it was PG Day. I have been here for 15 years and I did not know what PG day represented so I asked the local Belizean: “What is PG Day?” They shrugged their shoulders as if they were baffled too and said:”…well, it’s the party after Christmas and the one before Valentines Day!”

Yes, there is always celebrating going on around here! Anyway, it is nearly the end of the month already and I haven’t shared all my pictures from the last party season so I will finish off with some left-over pictures…

The goosies took over the hill at Christmas time despite Gnome taking a chunk out of it. We will re-claim the hill…the power struggle continues…

During the festive period, Gnome dug a cooking pit into the side of the sand. We spent two weeks baking a succession of au-gratin dishes:

Potato au gratin…we had this one many times. It is a hearty meal for cool weather:

This was a bread and Twix gratin with sweet bechamel sauce. Gratin is basically any dish topped with a browned crust usually with breadcrumbs. Also, bechamel sauce is the most popular type of sauce in these dishes. Basically, this gives you a lot of room for creativity:

Okay, I’ve caught up with my pictures so I’ll be taking some new photos tomorrow…

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Catching Up With Pictures

January 16, 2019 Munchkin

It’s another grey and miserable day and we are feeling it…where is the sun? Wahhhhh!!

I opened the front door this morning and from the veranda view, I spied my eggplant (aubergine) jiggling up and down on a raised bed. Plants don’t jiggle! There was a piece of zinc blocking my view so I stepped outside to see what was happening and it was My Goosie on my vegetable bed munching away! “My Goosie” was the very first baby goosie that I looked after last year; she came from a single egg that we found plop in the middle of the yard on New Year’s Day. While she was growing up, she would follow me around as I harvested vegetables from the raised beds. Learning from imitation, she got into the habit of nibbling on unusual things like aubergine leaves, rocket and mustard.

Well, My Goosie has had a sudden re-collection of childhood days and is eating all our vegetable plants. I have also lost my dandelions to her; fortunately she has not pulled up the roots so I will transplant them to a safer place today. I have tried talking to her but she refuses to listen…must be that adolescent time! 😉

Anyway, goosie antics aside I wanted to catch up with farm news with a few pictures. By the way, talking of aubergines, this is the variety I am harvesting right now; they from Thailand. They are about an inch in size and are really nice cooked slowly in olive oil.

Gnome did a Christmas Eve planting of special Peruvian corn:

The ducks and geese like to walk round and round this enclosure hoping to find an entrance to these sweet tit-bits! This is the corn about 3 weeks later; doing very well and faring nicely in this rainy weather:

Oh and pigeon pea is in season again; I will write more about it soon since we are harvesting and eating this everyday:

Belize, Food

What We Ate On Christmas Day…

December 26, 2018 Munchkin

I sometimes find it entertaining to post pictures of my food up because I do realise that probably nobody really cares!! Ha-Ha!! We had a lovely Christmas together…just the two of us. This year, we gave gifts to each other (we don’t always do this because it can become a habit rather than acting out of spontaneity) . We buy the gifts together on-line and then present them to each other on Christmas Day. We both got fountain pens to write our diaries; we have started writing on a daily basis and I found that a ubiquitous ball-point pen was lasting me two weeks and I was storing up a massive collection of empty Bic pens under the bed. Okay, no more plastic things to throw away…I am now using a fountain pen which seems to be more ecological. We also got leather tool bags (for putting around our waists) which are fantastic for holding all our tools on the farm. I am very pleased with mine because I have been carrying all my stuff in a Reimer’s corn burlap bag. I feel like a fashion Munchkin!

We had our main Christmas meal at lunch time since I was brought up in Scotland but that is as far as my Scottish Christmas tradition goes as you will see from our unconventional festive dishes:

This is the main course: beef heart medallions with caramelised onions, shiitake mushrooms, water chestnuts, Barbados gooseberry and Chinese red dates. Potatoes were baked in charcoal. Fennel and sorrel as garnish. Ta-da…

Salad consisted of greens from Munchkin’s garden which included rocket, sorrel (roselle) calyces, Malabar spinach and edible calamondin peel.

Dessert was a chocolate-spice cake and Munchkin’s lemon ice-cream with Chocolate Velvet (see Apothecary) drizzled on top:

There you go…after all this and the left-overs, we are going onto vegetable soups for a while…

We are going on Walkabout for a while so see you in a while!!

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

A Few More Pictures…

December 24, 2018 Munchkin

I thought that I would sneak in a few more pictures from the farm just before Christmas Day. Here are pictures of our peanut; look at the size of the leaves on the black peanut. These will be ready to harvest in February.

These are ripe fruit of the peanut butter plant. When left to ripen on the tree, the birdies usually get them. You can actually pick the fruit at an orange stage and then allow them to soften by themselves. They have the consistency of lotus paste (if you know what I mean).

Peanut Butter Fruit on tree:

Oh, and sorry I don’t have the pictures in sequence but this a picture of the leaves of jumbo peanut…still not as big as the black peanut!

I have started the last lot of seedlings before dry season: Gnome’s Mum will be pleased to see that the pomegranate seeds are still viable after a year; pomegranates in the middle, tobacco to the front and water cress to the back:

The water cress are ready to be planted out in our new grey water pond. We are planting them in a shaded area where the water flows from the veranda to the pond. Water cress likes constantly moving water:

The black peppers transplanted well; here is one showing new growth:

I will leave you with a festive picture. It is sorrel time again:

Belize, Farming, Food

Hot and Sunny!

December 5, 2018 Munchkin

The weather is hot and sunny right now. This is probably a good thing because Gnome is in the middle of pond digging. The first pond is almost done…just needs to go a foot deeper. The first part that I showed you last week has been lined with construction plastic, the sides have been weighed down with heavy rocks and taro and peanut have been planted. I am not going to show you a picture yet because it still looks like a messy construction site. We had to also fence off the whole area because the goosies thought that the new pond was a new swimming and socialising area. I had to chase them off with a broom when they started tearing up the planted peanut. Yes, those dastardly goosies are getting all feisty for breeding season and they are spoiling for a fight!

This is a picture of “Silly Goosie”; she is a bit of a loner and makes a weird “whir…whir…whir” noise as opposed to the more familiar “ghwaa! ghwaaa!” You may only appreciate my goosie communication observations if you are being surrounded 24 hours a a day by a gaggle of geese! Usually she walks about in the yard all the day talking to herself while the rest of them go off swimming. She seems happy enough.

Aside from digging in the dirt, Gnome has been air-layering to get more fruit trees for our newly organised orchard.

I have been planting black pepper cuttings:

The plan is to plant 10 to 20 vines behind the house to harvest enough pepper to use for the year. I have neglected the pepper in recent years and have resorted to buying white pepper…I know…that’s not like me at all!! The bought white pepper is bad quality and I just can’t get that lovely, Chinesy peppery flavour and aroma into my food. Time and time again, I am finding that money can’t buy everything and if I want something good, I have to do it myself! So back to looking after my plants and harvesting and processing…

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Farm Plants.

November 27, 2018 Munchkin

Hello! Still here on the farm and still hauling water up into the house. It’s not a huge deal (with Munchkin’s well trained strong arms!); it is only an issue when we are trying to do a washing machine load. The washing machine takes 40 gallons in total (=8 pigtail buckets) with the wash and rinse cycle so that’s the real pain. But, of course we still have to do it and the clothes need to get washed! Right now, we are still in the midst of the grey water drainage project #135 so the water tower preparations are not in the forefront yet. The last few days, Gnome has been digging (I believe that’s what Gnomes do amongst many, many other things) our first drainage ditch which takes all the washing-up, clothes washing and bathing water out of the house area.

The pond is actually bigger than this now and the final size will be 3 feet (90cm) by 30 feet (9metres). We will be planting edible plants (taro, lotus, etc) in this first pond. The overall plan is to have several of these connected ponds draining from one to another until they reach their final destination which is a great big banana and plantain grove. That way, all the nutrients from our grey water can be used to water a whole bunch of food plants as it wends its way from food pond to food pond. What a great way to water your own food!

Anyway, food is always in abundance on the farm and I am so pleased with our harvests. This is the lifestyle for beings (like Munchkin and Gnome) who like to eat and cook good food.

Just got a sweet potato harvest today:

Barbados Gooseberry is producing…

Oh and look at the flowers of the Barbados Gooseberry…

And yes we are eating dandelion salad right now…

Some hot peppers; this is a funny story. For quite some time, we have been trying to procure durian (Asian smelly fruit that all Asians adore and adulate). We tried to buy from Ebay several times: “fresh seeds from China.” If anyone knows about Durian, the seeds are the size of chestnuts but each time we received our seeds they would be pepper seeds!! These Chinese…they really are something trying to pass off pepper seeds for durian seeds!! So, these are our “Chinese Rip You Off Not-Durian Ha-Ha Pepper Seeds.” I guess it is still something…

Oh this is a pretty edible: celosia; kinda like a spinach:

Okay, guys have a good night!!

Casa Mascia Apothecary