Category Archives: Plants

More Pasta Colours in Belize!

January 16, 2021 Munchkin 1 Comment

I wrote a blog post titled Pasta Colours in Belize a couple of months ago. We hadn’t finished our experimentation at that point because the pasta machine couldn’t take the Munchkin and Gnome marathon. Anyway, I promised that we would continue with the pasta colours on a later date. Now that we have the noodle machine, we re-started our research on other pasta colours in Belize. I mentioned that we needed a tomato red/orange alternative…this is what we have come up with. First we tried powdered annatto and this it the result. It’s isn’t your typical orangey tomato…it is more rusty brown-orangey:

We still thought that it was a palatable and vibrant colour for a dish. Annatto powder is bland so you don’t get much in terms of contribution of flavour. The next experiment was carrot juice….this one we have fallen in love with…carrot pasta/noodles!! What a lovely colour!

We have also been looking at sources of green coloured pasta. Just as a re-cap, we’ve had spirulina pasta:

We have tried calaloo, an popular green amaranth that is grown in Belize:

We have also made chaya pasta. Chaya (Cnidoscolus aconitifolius) is a green vegetable found in Belize…everyone in Belize says they love it and it’s heaps good for you but I have never seen a Belizean dish with chaya in it. This is what the plant looks like:

We got very nice results with chaya; oooh, such a beautiful mottled look!!

Chaya is a good source of protein, vitamins, calcium and iron. Using it as an ingredient in pasta/noodles boosts the nutritive value. We are also very pleased with this colour.

Belize, Food, Plants

Some Interesting Plants!

January 11, 2021 Munchkin

I am trying to keep a captive audience (Ha-Ha) but it isn’t always easy to come up with a catchy title…you know, one where you will definitely click to read the rest of the post! Well, I do have some interesting pictures…if you want to have a nosy…

This one is called a kiwano (Cucumis metuliferus) which is originally from Africa. It is a very unusual fruit because it has horns…the horns are actually very sharp and one fruit is considerably heavy at about 1/2lb in weight.

(Gnome says that it would make a very dangerous fruit weapon. I told him not to worry and that I wouldn’t try to throw one at him even if I got into a bad mood!!)

This fruit is an annual vine in the cucumber and melon family. This is our first planting and we have found them very easy to germinate and grow in Belize. They are highly productive but prone to caterpillar infestation. So far, we only have the unripe green ones. They have the same texture as cucumbers. At this stage, they still have a mild tropic fruit flavour which makes them more flavour-some than a cucumber. We have a lot of them right now so we have just been eating them raw as shown in the picture. They are supposed to turn orange-yellow when they are ripe…seems to be taking ages. We can’t wait to try them because they are supposed to have a passion fruit/banana/ tropical fruit type of flavour. We will keep you posted on this one.

Okay, the next picture is amazing. We have been waiting two years for this vine to flower and it was well worth the wait. This is plant is from the Aristolochia genus and this particular variety is called Dutchman’s Pipe.

Wow!! It really does look like a pipe and it is so pretty. The origins of the name comes from a Greek individual called Aristolochos who dreamed that the plant could be used to treat snake bites. Apparently, this plant was an ancient remedy for uterine problems. Now, it is considered toxic and poisonous. This is one of the few ornamental plants that we have. That’s it for now…

Belize, Farming, Plants

Munchkin Update.

January 4, 2021 Munchkin

Munchkin and Gnome have started the new year with hard work and lots and lots of hard work and there is still more work to be done!! The house is getting tidied up and we have a work schedule that has not been thwarted by the weather (only by a bunch of army ants on the 1st of January). Apart from that…the weather has been co-operating…that is a first!!

The only harvest that we have right now is tobacco; here is a picture of the leaves drying. This particular tobacco variety has a reddish colour.

Another picture:

This stuff takes up a lot space so Gnome has been twisting them into tobacco rope:

Oh, before I forget…remember that Crazy Cat of ours (the feral one)? He is actually sitting now on our laps and likes to sit with Gnome when he is working with the tobacco. Have we tamed the wild cat??

What else is happening? As I mentioned already, we don’t have much in terms of new vegetables. We are mostly eating moringa leaves for greens right now. We actually have this new vegetable…a bitter gourd (serosi)…an unusual white variety. This type is less bitter so I don’t like it as much…it is a matter of personal taste…

Oh, yes…we are still make pasta/ noodles!! We are trying to work through a 50lb bag of flour. It might take a while. We have been experimenting with new colours and flavours…more about that soon!!

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Growing Black Pepper

December 11, 2020 Munchkin

We have had black pepper (Piper nigrum) plants for about ten years…even though I have written a few articles on this plant, it has not produced a consistent harvest until now. When we first started the farm, we thought that plants could be stuck anywhere and they would sort themselves out(!) The wonders of innocent and inexperienced youth!! And so we planted our black pepper plants beside palm trees hoping for a bountiful crop. This method proved quite haphazard as some years we would gather black pepper and other years, there was nothing at all.

From my observation, the pepper plants did not grow well in these conditions because the palm frond shaded them out too much. And also, a lot of the blackbirds (and other birds) hung around the shaded palm areas to get the ripe pickings even before we noticed. When we did get harvests, it was great:

I even made white pepper which is pretty labour intensive:

Wonderful:

Anyway, the years passed by so quickly and it was only two years ago that we finally had the time to re-address the black pepper crop which we found meagre and inconsistent. This time we decided to erect posts and plant cuttings beside them; this is a picture taken in 2018.

As you can see the black pepper has been planted in full sun on the south-side. They have been planted in tyres to give them some protection from heavy rains. This was a success and the plants grew up the posts very quickly and started producing within about a year. Presently, we are in year 2 and the vines are producing all year round! I am so pleased because I can use fresh black pepper everyday…what a lovely luxury!!

We have six plants that provide all the black pepper that we need for the kitchen. Everyone should have a couple of these in their backyard…they don’t take up much space and produce continuously! See the second picture below…they don’t need to be planted so far apart…we had put chicken wire in-between the posts thinking that the vine would preferentially spread out. However, they seem to be quite happy just growing up wooden posts like this:

Okay, have a nice Friday night!!

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Can’t Think of a Catchy Title!

December 10, 2020 Munchkin

I can’t think of a Catchy Title and I can’t think of a Catchy first sentence to you reel you into my new post…Ha-Ha!! Anyway, I wanted to show you some pictures of plants and vegetables around the farm…oops, that’s not going to get you going, is it?? This week, we are cleaning up the farm again and re-planting. With all the rains from the hurricanes, we lost most of our crops which included the pumpkins, melons and corn. That is life but it sucks sometimes!!

Gnome, we have lost our melon and corn crop!!

These are pictures of plants that made it through the terrible rains…well done, my little (or big) plants!!

These are the beans that are growing up the side of our house and now over our roof. This is the Gnome and The Giant Beanstalk story.

These are winged beans (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus), a long variety that grows to about 1 to 2 feet long. Although it grows very well in this climate, it is not commonly known about or grown in Belize. I have seen a few people growing it and they are usually Asian people. This is a plant originally from Papua New Guinea (according to good old Wiki) and is grown mostly in South East Asia as a vegetable crop. The thing that I like about this plant is that all parts are edible including the leaves, beans, shoots (like tiny asparagus),flowers and roots. We eat the green pods either uncooked in salads or cooked in stir fry or stews. The mature beans are supposed to be like soya beans…but we haven’t tried eating it that way yet. We also haven’t tried the roots either…maybe that can be a later post when we experiment more with this vegetable. This plant is annual hence the reason why we are allowing it to cover our house (!)…the plant will die in mid March and that is when we will harvest seed to sow for the following year.

The next survivor is a flattish looking sweet habanero:

They have that familiar habanero taste but they are sweet rather than hot. They add a mild pepper taste to salads and stews. Very easy to grow in 5 gallon pig tail buckets and withstands bad, tropical storms!

Gnome is pleased that the tobacco made it. They were grown on raised beds (but still, a lot of other crops didn’t even make it despite being planted in a similar manner). We are growing a different variety each time; this one is called ‘Mammoth’…I am not sure why…they are the same size as our usual tobacco plants. Anyway, they are a nice plant to grow…if you don’t use the leaf to make cigars, you can also use them as an organic insecticide (more about that in a later post).

The flowers are beautiful and its essence can be distilled into a perfume:

Okay, let’s have one more:

For once, the rosemary plants are actually doing very well. They usually grow to a small plant and then all of a sudden, they just die. This year, someone gave us cuttings of a rosemary known to grow well in Belize…look at them…they look great!! We used to grow our rosemary from seed packets bought from the States or Italy…I think perhaps those varieties were not acclimatized to the Tropics and that was why we failed to grow this herb successfully in the past.

I have more pictures but I will save them for another post. Here is a random picture of a nice spider web because I don’t know what to do with it and I wanted to show it to you anyway!

Belize, Farming, Food, Pets, Plants

Just a Quickie!

November 30, 2020 Munchkin

It’s just a short one today because we are both really tired. Shock…horror…it hasn’t rained for three days and it is actually drying up. Gnome ran out today to try to chop the brush, that has grown up with the rains, in the goosie coup. I am trying scrub the walls inside the house…with the non-stop rains for two months straight…there is mould everywhere.

Alas, there is so much work to do!! And you know what…this year, we never finished a whole round of mowing…and, not because of the usual machinery failure but because we have had so much rain. I can’t remember the number of times we have had to stop halfway and start all over again.

Anyway, this is a quick catch up on farm activities. Here are a few pictures from the farm. This is our giant loofah; we have been eating the young fruit as vegetables.

We have a found a different type of sorrel which produces early; it flowered in September and we are harvesting right now; we are drinking sorrel tea every morning. It is high in Vitamin C and apparently good for hypertension.

This is our usual Belizean sorrel which is harvested at Christmas time…see how different they look…

This is a snake that we saw eating a frog. It was so intent on digesting that he allowed me to do a photo shoot:

Oh, and one last picture…what’s that…another one!! Could not resist it…another boy!! More about this crazy scamp next time…

Belize, Food, Plants, Saving Money

Pasta Colours in Belize.

November 29, 2020 Munchkin

If you happen to have a pasta maker lying around in the kitchen during this new COVID 5am to 9pm curfew and you are stuck indoors with bad weather, you might want try your hand at making colourful pasta with the ingredients in Belize. I thought we could have a lively discussion about pasta colours today since were just talking about pasta yesterday…if you can think of anything better…I am all ears!! Yes, this is another Bored in Belize project!

The green colour in pasta is originally made with spinach greens. Here in Belize, there is a popular green called calaloo which is from the amaranth family. On our farm, it comes up everywhere as a voluntary vegetable.

I collected a whole bunch of calaloo and boiled it until it turned to mush…then I added this to flour to make the dough for pasta. The resulting colour was very nice and Gnome said that it looked like authentic spinach pasta…if you look carefully, there is a mottled green colour.

I was very pleased with this colour as we had previously tried spirulina, a high protein algae that Gnome grows for the animals. When it is freshly harvested, it is a very intense green colour:

Splat!! Spirulina looks like a big green glob and we thought it would be perfect as a colour additive in pasta. This is what we got:

It doesn’t look so bad but as it ages, it actually acquires a blue tinge to it which looks less appetizing. I don’t have a picture of the aged pasta but I have one of spirulina ice-cream; it is a funny cyan colour:

Anyway, the calaloo experiment was so much better. Another colourful ingredient that you can use is cacao powder which imparts a rich colour and chocolatey taste:

To get a vibrant yellow colour in pasta, turmeric works very well:

Alas, we have not finished our colour experiment yet because if you read our last post, you will know that our pasta machine has stopped working. We still need to find a nice red colour…I don’t want to use tomatoes because that would be too straight forward…what about ground annatto? Hopefully this will be a later blog if we ever find another pasta machine!!

Belize, Plants

Gnome and The Giant Beanstalk.

November 25, 2020 Munchkin 2 Comments

We have this giant beanstalk stuck to the side of our house obliterating all views to the north east. So, how did we get into this beanstalk situation? Well, it is all to do with our personal interpretations of the Munchkin-Gnome relationship. You see…I think that we have a relationship where, we shouldn’t need to have a conversation about every single thing that needs to be done on the farm since Gnome should already know what needs to be done. On the other hand, Gnome thinks that if I want something done, I should just go ahead and say it.

Anyway, this all stemmed from a bean plant that sprouted next to the house. It started off small and it just got bigger and bigger since it has been raining non-stop for months. Well, I didn’t think I needed to have a conversation with Gnome about it since I thought that it was obvious that it had to be removed.

Months passed and the vine was growing and spreading along the side of our house. I didn’t say anything and Gnome didn’t do anything. It grew to 12 feet and reached the roof…and that’s when I finally had to say something.

Munchkin: “Ahem…Gnome…did you notice, by any chance, that there is a big plant stuck to the side of the house?”

Gnome: “Yes, of course I did, my dear.”

Munchkin: “Well, why haven’t you got rid of it?”

Gnome: “….because you haven’t mentioned it, I thought you hadn’t noticed it…”

Gnome thought I wouldn’t notice a massive creeping vine growing up the side of the house obliterating all views to the first garden???

If finally dawned on me that at this point that I had to “have the conversation” and speak plainly and tell him what I wanted him to do:

Munchkin: ” Can you get rid of the plant please!”

(I wasn’t as polite as that but for the purposes of wholesome family entertainment, this will suffice).

Gnome: ” Yes, of course. Why didn’t you just say? But, one thing…we will have to wait for seed.”

Munchkin: “Okay, when can we collect seed?”

Gnome: “…mmmm…let me think…sometime near the Ides of March…”

The Ides of March!! The middle of March!! That is months away…

Amusing, Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Love In A Time Of Covid.

November 22, 2020 Munchkin 1 Comment

Love in a Time of COVID: Epic love and adventure set in the treacherous, wild jungles of Belize. Medicine Man meets Medicine Woman. This is a story of struggle and emancipation; the battle against the ravaging storms pummelling across Central America. A compelling true story of Explosive love and passion….now screening at a cinema near you!

Hello there!! Did I get your attention? Did I get my ‘foot through the door’ to get you to click on this blog post! I thought the explosive love would get you!! Okay, now that you are here…I have a few pictures on the farm for you to ‘ooooh’ and ‘aaahhh!’ over.

This is jujube (Ziziphus jujuba) which is also known as Chinese red date. Here in Belize, they call it Chiney plum. I have seen a few trees in people’s yards but it isn’t commonly grown. You definitely won’t find this kind of stuff in Punta Gorda market. We have four trees in total and this year, they are blooming like there is no tomorrow. When eaten green, they have the texture and taste of crunchy apples; when ripe (soft and yellow), they taste like pears. We also have a round variety:

This second variety is actually more acidic tasting and remind me of tiny pocket-sized crab apples. Since it was such a bountiful harvest (and were flooded in from Hurricane Eta), we did a canning marathon. Gnome peeled and I pared; as we processed, we dunked the cut fruit into water mixed with lemon juice (3.33oz lemon juice per gallon of water). This was for preservation purposes whilst preparing in a humid, tropical environment and it helped prevent oxidation of the fruit. After two days of sweating profusely over buckets of jujube in the jungle (is this the romantic, epic part??!!) we ended up with 48 of these jars in all.

And, Yes! We were surprised with the peachy colour too! We are not sure why… Gnome reckons that it might be a ph indicator for the lemon juice (???not sure). Anyway, once canned, they taste like canned pears rather than apples. We have made pie and eaten some with vanilla ice-cream. Oh, and we made a simple boozy dessert by drizzling our cacao elixir over it. Overall, it is a winner and definitely worth the time and energy in these isolating COVID times. After all, money can’t buy this kind of love and passion!

Belize, Farming, Food, Plants

Still Working!

May 5, 2020 Munchkin

Oh we are so tired but very satisfied with all the work that we have done this year; I think we actually did start on the 1st of January and we have worked like busy little bees during this COVID-19 quarantine. The curfew has really made us stay in, stop doing any frivolous activities and get down to the business of working. No distractions and nothing to procrastinate over!

I have always and forever had a big bag of seeds in the freezer (you know the one…seeds for planting next year or when we are ready…or when it is time!!). Well, in the last two months I have planted every single seed…yeah, even the weird and unusual ones. Because our “dry season garden” worked really well to keep us going with fresh greens and vegetables, we have decided to make more gardens. So this is the first garden which has green beans, bitter gourd (serosi) and okra. Gnome has re-tilled it and started another round of okra.

We had a second garden planted about two months ago for tomatoes and aubergines. Unfortunately, all my tomatoes died (fungus and rotting stems). My tomatoes are sometimes a hit and miss. The aubergines are still alive…I have baby purple striated, little orange bobble ones and some other mystery from Italy. This is the second garden; you can also see the trellises in the background which will be for climbing fruits and vegetables…so far, we have loofah and sweet granadilla.

Gnome has just finished tilling and digging a third garden. This is for pumpkins, melons, spinach greens, a bit of peanut and onions.

In the last few days, I have started the following seedlings: dandelion, amaranth, fennel, another three different types of aubergine and I can’t remember what else. When I excitedly told Gnome that I had started 24 new vegetable seedlings…he looked at me and said,

“…oh, will have to start digging a fourth garden…”

Actually, he looked more like this:

Okay, the rains have started early this year…what a relief! Will try to write again soon with more planting pictures.

Casa Mascia Apothecary

Category Archives: Plants

More Pasta Colours in Belize!

Some Interesting Plants!

Munchkin Update.

Growing Black Pepper

Can’t Think of a Catchy Title!

Just a Quickie!

Pasta Colours in Belize.

Gnome and The Giant Beanstalk.

Love In A Time Of Covid.

Still Working!

Everything Handmade in Belize.