Category Archives: Food

Munchkin And Gnome On The Farm!

October 23, 2018 Munchkin 2 Comments

I am writing today because I seem to have a bit more time and I also feel like writing. This morning started off with very dark and ominous clouds; despite the warning signs, I pushed ahead and made the decision to work outside. Panda came with a pick-up truck of sawdust and emptied it in record time. It started bucketing down at about 9am and I had never seen Panda run so quickly to get out of the rain…but he forgot his shovel in his haste! Anyway, thanks Panda for the sawdust which we are putting around the house to raise the ground up. The rains and big, flat goosie feet have caused so much erosion that we have lost about a foot of dirt all around the house!

We are officially on Possum Alert right now. A couple of nights ago, we awoke to the din of goosie squawking and Gnome ran outside immediately. He managed to spy a predator and with the aid of a flash-light, he could make out the silhouette of a possum. Yes, they are back: Back with a Vengeance! The traps are out and we have warned the goosies to stay close to the house and not to go out in the dark alone after 9pm…fat chance they will actually listen!! We haven’t caught anything yet but are already talking about having a nice possum curry.

The big rain this morning lasted about an hour and now it is sunny again. Gnome has been doing a spot of plumbing because we would like to move the sink out of the house and onto the veranda. I was going to take some pictures but then I stopped and wondered if anyone actually wanted to see a picture of pipes! Ha-Ha!!

Well, here is a prettier picture for you! I never thought that I would be so happy with dandelions…but, aren’t they lovely…Dandelions in Belize.

We have been enjoying dandelion greens in our salads. We plan on growing a whole bed of dandelions for roots and greens and are collecting the seeds right now in preparation for this project.

That’s all for now folks!!

Belize, Farming, Food

Rain!!!

October 17, 2018 Munchkin

It has been pouring down everyday since Sunday and we have been stuck indoors. Thank goodness, we got our planting done on Saturday…for the first time we seem to be synchronising with the weather. We are starting to plant new fruit trees in rows…I know…how about that for a novel, organised orchard! In the past we have planted our fruit trees in a haphazard sort of way: “how about there…in that space!” and now that the trees have grown, we are finding that they are in the wrong place, too close to the house, too close together, blocking the path, blocking the driveway, etc, etc. You name the planting mistake…we have done it!!

So many trees everywhere!!

Anyway, we live and learn! Well, the last few days have been all day rains so there has been no hope of continuing with projects right now.

Nevertheless, we can’t complain about the continuous food on the farm. It is canistel time again:

More Peach Palms:

Peanut Butter Fruit; these are just starting:

Okay, I will write again soon!

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Farm Food…

September 19, 2018 Munchkin

Hello! We have had about 10 days straight of dry, sunny weather and we have been working our little butts off! Today, we are sooo tired that we have decided to take the day off. This is how we look at the end of the day: Oh, so knackered, just want to sleep…

Please note that the Cat has not been physically working and looks like this all the time!!

Anyway, I have managed to wrestle back control over the trees in the yard and the pond area. They have been cleaned up, mulched and fertilised and now on a maintenance schedule. The next battle is the orchard at the back which was overgrown for two years because of machinery failure. Now that Gnome has brought the grass/bush back down, I have been piling up all the debris and branches. A big thank-you to Panda for helping out with this bit! This was the orchard…very bushy. Now, it has really opened up. The orchard mostly consisted of sapodilla trees but from cleaning up, it looks like we may have lost about 6 out of 20 of the trees. We will probably replace with a variety of fruit trees including golden plum, mango and rambutan. This is a picture of “before”…don’t have “after” yet…

Meanwhile, Gnome has been preparing the veranda for electricity and plumbing. We are moving the sink out of the house (not enough space) with a view to moving the kitchen out too (not enough space!). To add to all these plans within plans, we have decided (work in process and will take a couple of years to establish) to have two cooking areas. We will have a cooking area on the veranda with dedicated charcoal stoves…mostly set up for Gnome for Italian slow-cooking, wine-making and whatever he feels like cooking up. At some stage, I will have an outside Munchkin kitchen with a fire/coal pit so I will do most of the cooking over coals. There will be a dedicated sheltered sitting area outside for this and a little kitchen-bunker made from used tyres. 🙂 That’s the plan…

Anyway, the farm keeps on producing and each season brings something different to the kitchen table. We have a blackberry bearing right now; very difficult to harvest because the tree is so tall so I have to wait for the berries to fall to the ground. I tried thrashing the branches about with a big stick but I got too tired. If I can collect enough, I will get Gnome to make some wine:

It is also the season for peach-palm. The geese love these and actually wait underneath the palms for the fruit to fall and when this happens, this sets off a rugby-type game that they play. It’s fun to watch amidst the goosie shrieks and carrying-on. Run Goosie Run!!

We are eating them too. I cut them in half, remove the centre seed and boil them for about 45 minutes. Since, I do this in large batches, the cooked fruit is stored in the freezer ready for stews and soups.

Oh and the malabar spinach looks very healthy and has taken over a whole bed:

Aubergines (eggplants) are starting to produce; Pantry Cat is also looking after the vegetables…he keeps the iguanas away during the day…good boy, remember to wake up if you hear any stealthy crunch-crunch noises!!

Belize, Food

Munchkin’s Journey Ration.

September 8, 2018 Munchkin

Gnome has charged me with the task of making a journey ration (cake) in the old-fashioned sense of the word. He is looking for a staple that can be used for journeys or simply as a food ration. It must be balanced with carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamins and minerals. Also, it should be storable at room temperature and have a reasonably long shelf life. Taste is also an important criteria! Oh, and I have to try to use ingredients that I can find in Belize or better still, food that is harvested from our farm.

Since we have had a few rainy days, I have had time to experiment: I am using the Italian Panforte as a basis for my recipe. Nowadays, Panforte is eaten at Christmas time and can contain almonds, citrus peel, dried fruits and spices tightly packed and bound together with a mixture of flour (very little) and honey. Traditionally, panforte was used as a “journey cake” for soldiers during long marches.

Since I don’t have an oven any-more, I have had to start the recipe from scratch and find a way to cook it on a cast iron skillet over a charcoal stove. The first challenge is to get a basic recipe that actually works using this baking modality.

The first batch contained the following: Toasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds, dried jackfruit, lime peel with cassava starch, honey, jackfruit wine and brown sugar to bind. I flavoured it with clove and cinnamon. Here is a picture; they look very Christmasy!

So far, so good. The rations baked well and were very tasty. I calculated these basic rations to be about 350 kcals each so on an active day, we would need to consume 6 of these and on a sedentary day, 3 of them. Now that I have the basic recipe, I will be working on the following additions and modifications:

Extra protein possibly in the form of beef jerky/ ground ora pro nobis leaves.
Vitamins and minerals from dried, ground chaya leaves.
Addition of a variety of dried fruits from the farm (suriname cherry, mango, pineapple, sapodilla and whatever I can get my hands on!)
Addition of a variety of citrus peel from the farm including lemon, calamondin and grapefruit for taste.
More exotic nut or nut-like food that we grow eg. cashew nuts, malabar chestnut and even coconuts.
Cacao beans (nibs)!
Oooohhh, I am sure I will think of more things! It starts to get very fun and exciting to boldly go into the creative unknown!

This is still a work in progress and I am happy to keep on experimenting whenever the mood takes me. So far, Gnome has been pleased with my efforts…I know this because he has eaten all my ration bars!! In addition to this, I have made 100kcal truffle rations which can be eaten in between normal meals when we need a little bit of extra energy for physical work on the farm. This lot has been polished off too…also a winner!!

Okay, I will keep you posted on my Munchkin Journey Rations!!

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

It’s Horrible Outside!

August 28, 2018 Munchkin

It is full on rainy season and it is absolutely pouring down. Every morning we have been waking up to thunderstorms and torrential rain. Water is flowing in tiny little streams on our farm and we haven’t been able to get out to work for a full week. This morning, Gnome said, “…oh that’s interesting…the weather report said it was going to be bright and sunny with a 1% chance of rain.” Well, looks like we got the 1% or the weather report is totally, wildly inaccurate…I suspect the second. 😉

Anyway, this is the best time for pumpkins, gourds and all manner of curcubits. The water allows the them to swell up into humongous fruit…and, I think this is the best part…those beetles that like to drill holes into all my tasty, delectable vegetables can’t get out to burrow holes because of the rains! Ahhh, of course that is the silver-lining cloudy thing that Hallmark people like to point out to me. 😉

These are some bottle gourds harvested from our farm. We eat most of them young but I have left three of them to mature to use as vessels to store some of our home-made wine.

We had our first breadfruit harvest this year; it has taken three years for the trees to start baring. We probably have harvested about 100 from three young trees.

We are eating the fruit as a potato substitute; of course, as all Belizeans will testify, breadfruit is best fried in oil:

We like to cut them into “chip” shapes (easier to eat with chopsticks!) but most people around here have them as half or quarter wedges.

Gnome cooked a breadfruit stew with his usual home-made wine, tomato sauce Italian thing. It was very good:

Oh, and Gnome has been sticking coke bottles around coconut trees…what is he up to?

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food, Mushrooms, Plants

It’s About Time…

August 25, 2018 Munchkin

It’s about time to write again. The goosies are calling me through space and time…they’ve been squeaking and squawking at me in their usual relentless way. Oh, and the grass keeps on growing! So I must keep on writing my exciting posts about geese and grass! Lately, we have had massive rains punctuated by one or two days of sun; we are still running around the farm doing whatever is possible in this wet weather when the opportunity presents itself.

We have been very fortunate with farm harvests during this rainy season and we are very thankful for them. Plenty of akee:

We really enjoy the texture and taste of akee; it has a unique fatty, buttery taste. I would even venture to say that I prefer them to avocadoes. We also had the fortune of wild paddy straw mushrooms coming up on one of our vegetable beds.

Here is a dish of paddy straw mushrooms cooked in olive oil, Gnome pasta stuff (yay! he is still cooking) and akee. Yes, we are still eating really well off the farm:

Oh and look at this…in between this huge abundance of food, Gnome still dug up beetle larvae, brought it into the house and asked me rather politely if I would like to share some food with him,

“…eh, Munchkin….would you be willing to eat some grubs…”

He wasn’t joking. This comes from his old bush tucker days in the Northern Territory, Australia when he used to forage around and eat witchity grubs and berries (as Gnomes do). I was a bit scared about eating these wiggly things live so I said that I could coat them in egg and breadcrumbs and fry them in oil. At this point, I started looking very closely at the writhing grubs and felt (would you believe it!) sorry for them. I exclaimed,

“…it’s a bit cruel to chuck these poor things in boiling hot oil, though!”

Next thing I know, Gnome is having a conversation with me about how to practically approach this apparent mental stumbling block:

“…well, I suppose you could parboil them first…or, you could chop their heads off first…”

I bailed out at this point and said,

“…look Gnome, I would eat these in a survival situation but the truth of the matter is that we have plenty of food on the farm right now. Why don’t I give them to Duckie? “

He didn’t really have a choice because I was out of the house before he could say anything. Sure enough, Duckie had a real gourmet treat of beetle larvae…she gobbled them up like there was no tomorrow.

Belize, Food

Trouble With Jackfruit!

June 23, 2018 Munchkin

Trouble with jackfruit or rather should it be Trouble with Munchkin? We have been getting so much jackfruit, I have been needing to process about 4 of them at a time every 2 to 3 days. You will only understand how I feel if you have ever needed to clean a jackfruit yourself. I don’t really want to complain because it is food but boy, is it a lot of work!! The other day, I went a bit mad on Gnome because it was so maddening and that’s how mad I was because I had done two and I had two more to go and I couldn’t take it anymore!!

Anyway, he tried to be diplomatic and told me to leave the last two jackfruit alone and do them the next day. He has his own work to do too and it isn’t like he is just sitting around doing nothing so it’s hard to get maddening mad!!

The next day, I tried it again with an all-new, well-behaved “thank the lord for our daily bread” Munchkin attitude. I am leading you into a cloudy story with a silver-lining if you haven’t noticed already….

So far, the jackfruit that I have been preparing are all the firm variety so they hard to cut through with a knife (blisters on the hands), the core is difficult to cut and each single piece of fruit requires to be pried off with the stubby fingers of a Munchkin. Arrrgh!!!!

Oh and don’t forget the boiling of the seeds and peeling each seed one by one! Oh and don’t forget the wine-making! It is a whole day affair.

Who said farm life was about rainbows and unicorns (what unicorns??). 😉

Okay, so I am so far in a good mood, thanking the lord…keeping the good mood going…and onto the fourth jackfruit.

And guess what? It is the biggest one…it is humongous and I am expecting a two hour job. It cuts like butter, flops open, the spine pops out and the fruit pop out too. What an amazing revelation…this last jackfruit (from the same tree??) is completely different and has a soft, cotton-like texture. It is sooooo easy to prepare and I did it in half the time. Afterwards, I told Gnome about it and we realised that when we planted the jackfruit “tree” we stuck five seeds into into the ground. Two of them germinated, grew up and intertwined giving the appearance of one tree hence the reason for two different varieties seeming to appear on a single tree.

This is the other type of jackfruit which is soft in texture. If you like it, you would describe it as buttery; if you don’t like it, you would say it was snotty. Nonetheless, easier to clean and if you are making wine, the texture is not an issue. On the whole, it was easy peasy compared to preparing the other type.

Cotton-like, soft variety:

Okay moral of the story. Stay in a good mood and something good (donum bonum/ good gift) can happen. Well, that’s Munchkin and Gnome philosophy and it works if you do it. It makes sense but harder to stay in a good mood (all the time) in reality. Got to persist though….

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food

Jackfruit Day.

June 7, 2018 Munchkin

Okay, so when we got up this morning, the sun was out but then the dark clouds moved in and then the sun peaked again and then, alas, there were clouds piling up from the east…oh, but then there was a bit of sun coming out again. We checked the weather report and it said there was a 50% chance of rain and 50% chance of no rain. When Panda came at 9am to help out on the farm, we sent him home since it started drizzling , the black clouds were gathering and there was a lot of thunder. As soon as he left, the sun came out again. The weather went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until I could stand it no more. Gnome realised I was turning into Crazy Munchkin so said,

“Okay, let’s stay indoors and make it a jackfruit day.”

(Thank God for sensible, no nonsense and practical Gnomes).

Well, you might have seen our jackfruits already…they are huge. Gnome cut them in half and I separated the seeds from the flesh.

Prepared Fruit:

We cleaned two huge jackfruit which took about 1 and 1/2 hours. It is really hard work, by the way, but I shouldn’t complain because it is a tonne of food.

I haven’t enjoyed eating the seeds in the past…we found them rather mealy and disappointing. This time however, our harvest was from a different tree; the boiled seeds were surprisingly good and did actually taste of chestnuts. There must have been about 10lbs of jackfruit seeds.

Once you boil the seed, there is an outer covering which you need to take off. Here is a close up picture of a cooked jackfruit seed cut in half:

Our plan is to dry the boiled seeds in the sun (what sun??!!) and once they have dried, we will ground them into flour. That’s the plan anyway…

So today, we stuffed ourselves full of jackfruit and the boiled seeds. I think we over-ate a wee bit because we both have sore stomachs right now. We are trying to settle our symptoms down with some peppermint tea. 😉

The rest of the fruit is being boiled up, as we speak, for wine; it is a murky mess right now but hopefully in a year, it will look like this:

So what’s it going to be tomorrow?? Sunny or Rainy. 🙂

Oh I might make marron glacé with the jackfruit nuts if I am in a good mood tomorrow….

Amusing, Blog, Farming, Food

Lots To Do!

May 13, 2018 Munchkin

After I got up this morning and after I had my buzz of Yorkshire tea, Gnome said to me very pointedly,

“….we are going to have a nice quiet day together. We might not achieve anything, we might not get anything done but that’s okay.”

He said this slowly and precisely so that I would not gloss over it and start doing my usual Hurricane Munchkin from kitchen to farm. Hence, I am sitting down in a Zen sort of way to try achieve balance. In my head, I am thinking:

(did he have to wait until after I had the tea??)

“…ooooh, I have ten jackfruit, or more to clean up…oh, and I have to feed my little goosies and I need to to do this and that and oh, I need to get that done before Tuesday because Wednesday will be busy…oh, and there is the Cacao Fest on Saturday too…oooh, busy busy!!”

Oh so much jackfruit this year…

And there I go again, the whole week is planned… 🙂

Anyway, it is all good and we can take a rest. Change of plan…

“…I am going to cook a Sunday roast and then…oops, I am starting the planning ahead again…”

Hee-Hee!! I will stop at the roast and take it from there.

Oh, what did you say, Gnome?? He just said something. He is going to make jackfruit wine today…Ha-Ha, he is still doing something…

Anyway, we are doing okay and are charging ahead to clean up the farm…onto the coconut area; we have so many sprouted coconuts (hundreds) that I will have to pick up (some of them rooted to the ground) so quite a lot of heavy work for the week. That is partly why Gnome has forced a break.

Okay, the tea is wearing off so I can probably sit down for a bit and watch some silly films with Gnome…

and perhaps make some wine together. Have a great restful Sunday!!

Belize, Food, Plants

More Stuff…

May 6, 2018 Munchkin

More stuff and photographs for a Sunday perusal if you are bored and/or doing your FB/ Blog Sunday thing!! Yes we have been busy little bees and Gnome has been storing up his charcoal for leaner days. He is doing one barrel a week so it is piling up. Well good for him, I am pleased with his continued hard work…sometimes he needs a bit of encouragement because he never thinks he does enough. He does!! I need to remind him that he is doing great…when there is no boss, we have to nudge each other along and remind each other that it is all okay and everything is okay!

Oh what else is happening…oh yes, the price of butane has gone up by 20%!! Nobody else seems to have noticed but we have because we hate spending money on consumables. We are cooking with charcoal everyday…steamboat, soups and even grilling with the hibachi (not sure how to spell that but hopefully you know what I am talking about). This is a picture of Gnome grilling steaks and making suriname cherry wine…all on charcoal. Yes, we are living the farm dream!!

I’ll leave you with some more farm pictures because that is what it is all about (well, for us it is).

The wax apples are starting and growing in abundance…ooooh, look at these…

They will turn into these:

We do grow some flowers…a little…not much. Here is one; frangipani/plumeria.

Huckleberries grow like weeds here….definitely an easy food to grow; totally recommend this one…you hardly need to do anything!!

Okay have a Funday Sunday!! 🙂

Casa Mascia Apothecary