We are always into eating on the farm and it’s always good to experiment with food. Here are a few interesting things to eat this season.
Ahhh…this first one starts with a story. For a while, the geese forgot there was a pond and hung around the house chasing us around the yard whenever the mood took them (which was very frequently). Then one day, they remembered that there was a pond and en masse trooped off to the pond. When we went to see what they were up to, they were diving under the water lilies and emerging back to the surface with round things the size of chestnuts stuffed in their beaks. They were gobbling them down like there was no tomorrow. And they were back the next day for more of the same.
Pond:
After a week or so of watching the geese stuff their faces, Gnome decided to wade into the pond to find out what they were eating. What he discovered was water lilly corms embedded in the mud. He dug up a bucket of these and told me that there was tonnes of them.
“Oh, it would be great if we could eat these too!”
And of course we did a Google search on “can you eat water lily corms” and sure enough, you can. It’s not just for geese.
To prepare, peel the outer layer to reveal a whitish carbohydrate-like food which can be boiled to eat. I will have more pictures later of the cooked corms. They taste like yam with a mild crunchy texture. Not extra-ordinary (like any carb really, you kinda dress it up for flavour) but definitely edible and worth harvesting if they are just there for the picking. Better than paying for shop bought potatoes!
The next interesting edible is the soursop. This year our tree is loaded so we are getting to experiment with it more.
From the information that I have gleaned from the Belizeans, the fruit is usually scraped over a sieve and the juice is collected to make juice, ice-cream and smoothies. The fruit has a cotton-like texture and tastes mildly sour with fine banana-like nuances. In short, it has its own particular soursop flavour and it is very difficult to liken it to any well-known food. My preparation method involves taking the seeds out of the fruit and eating the pulp as it is.
Soursop pulp:
Personally, I prefer to do this so that none of the fruit is wasted. Since Gnome and I have been going crazy with a gelato marathon right now, we have been making soursop gelato. By the way, when I say “gelato” I am not trying to appear fanciful. Gelato simply means that you are making an iced milk product with less air in it. We personally prefer this texture to the puffed up fluffiness of soft serve ice-cream. We are also not adding any sugar to the gelato so that the dessert is naturally sweetened with fruit only. In our latest experimentation we have found that a combination of banana (a variety called ice-cream banana incidentally) and soursop gives a very good texture and flavour without any sugar. Ice-cream bananas are very smooth and creamy:
Last but not least, this is an interesting edible pod. This is called Bukut in Belize and the trees are flowering every where right now. The blooms are a showy pink and make a nice ornamental if you have a very large yard! Very big tree! Anyway, the pods can get up to about 2 feet in length and to prepare, crack open and eat the pulp which are adhered to discs. (you can crunch through the whole thing). The seeds are not edible and are very hard in consistency…I think they use the seeds in Hawaii to make jewellery.
This is worth trying: the pulp of the bukut is sticky like thick syrup and tastes like molasses combined with oyster sauce. Really nice!! More for the Asian types that are used to fermented like products like miso and soya sauce. This is also very popular with the Belizeans. Gnome made a bukut frappe the other day; it was tasty….would go great with a shot of rum!! Gnome’s already thinking of using it as a flavouring for wine.
Here are some pictures. We gathered this lot from Belcampo Lodge in Toledo, Belize; our bukut tree has just started flowering this year and there are only a few pods on our tree so far.
They look great as foragable hors d’oeuvres (I just made that up but it’s the kind of thing people like to market!).
This is how we make our lives interesting on the farm. A combination of curiosity and creativity!
