Sherlock Gnomes!

February 9, 2021 Munchkin

Hey, guys!! Phew…it has been sooo hot!! Dry season may have started. It’s that time of the year again. Anyway, I have a funny story from the farm!

The story started with Cat Trouble which involved our big fat farm cat. Here is a picture of him to remind you of who we are talking about:

He sleeps a lot and he does usually look like this most of the time. The last week or so, he has been wide awake and acting all squirrelly. It was like he had taken a big gulp of coffee and he couldn’t sleep for days. Mostly, he was pacing up and down, pawing at doors to get out of the house (or get into the house). He was agitated and antsy and a pain in the neck!! At first, Sherlock Gnomes thought it was due to the maturing new cat (Crazy Cat) whom we hadn’t fixed yet. Crazy Cat is now about 4 times the size of the picture below with biggish balls (if you pardon my language).

Sherlock Gnomes: ‘…Hmmm, it might be the testosterone that the cat is producing that is bothering Big Cat…’

Okay, since there was so much silly nonsense going on with big farm cat, we got Crazy Cat fixed straight away. Okay done…oh, but big cat is still behaving the same…what’s going on??

Let’s now bring in another story that was happening about the same time. I lost my last piece of Christmas ham!! I left it defrosting over-night in the kitchen sink. For the purposes of this story, it is important to realise that our kitchen is on the veranda which is opened out with no walls or screening and has been like this for about 5 years. I have never had any pilfering so this was the first time. I woke up in the morning to a completely decimated piece of ham on the sink…something ate 1kg (2 lbs) of salty meat in one sitting. My first culprit was our Big Cat….which surprised me because he never (ever) jumps up on table tops to steal food…not in the 10 years that we have had him! However, since he had been acting ‘out of sorts’ lately I thought that he was a likely candidate.

Cat: I don’t understand what you are asking me.

Anyway, if you have ever tried talking to cat in a reasonable manner, you will know that you don’t get anywhere with that sort of talk. Sherlock Gnomes inspected his abdominal area for signs of stolen ham:

Sherlock Gnomes: ‘…Hmmm…it does not feel like he has consumed 1kg of ham…’

So, maybe it wasn’t him?? Who was it?? The other two kittens are still too small to jump onto this veranda…also, Big Cat is still acting weird…what’s going on!!

We decided after much deliberation with a couple of cups of tea that we could possibly have a possum thief. It is possum time again…

So, we set out traps with fried chicken bones (we have found that 10 out of 10 animals love fried chicken!). We made sure to put a few out so that even if we caught our cat, there would still be a trap left over to get the possum.

What do we find the next morning??? Drum roll please: what did we catch?? A Big Orange Cat…but not OUR big cat. Another male cat!!

The Case of the Antsy Cat and The Case of the Stolen Ham had been solved by the single capture of a cat!! Of course, our cat had been going crazy with another male cat prowling around the house!! And this cat was big…he ate my ham!!

Case has been solved. Oh, but there is more. We have another Sherlock Gnomes story to share with you! Tune in next time for more mystery and entertainment from the farm!

Belize, Farming, Plants

February Already!!

February 4, 2021 Munchkin

Hello, I keep on forgetting to write! January just passed by in a flash (I think I say this every year but it never ceases to amaze me) and now it is February already. The last time I wrote, I had a leg injury…I did have to sit with my leg up for 5 days to get better. It was gruesomely boring but I knew that I had to rest the leg to get a quick recovery. It was terrible because I couldn’t get up and down stairs and walk about on uneven ground on the farm…definitely not good if you live on a farm…made me realise that there is a certain level of fitness required in living this lifestyle. Gnome found me gruesomely annoying during this time!! Thanks for all your patience, Gnome!!

Let’s talk about calamondin since these are my last pictures left in my gallery. This is a citrus originally from the Philippines. It is a small round, orange citrus with a thin peel. The juice is sour and can be used in drinks or for marinating meat.

We planted our calamondins about 7 years ago; we got our seed from a Filipino lady in Belize…there are a surprising high number of Filipino people living in Belize especially in the Stann Creek area. The thing I like about this particular citrus is that the peel comes off easily and does not have the bitter pith that comes normally with these types of fruit.

I use the peel in all kinds of food…I put it soups, stews and stir fry…you get a really nice orangey taste and aroma in your food.

Of course, you can use the peel in sweets too as you can see in the next picture; we rolled pastry out with our wonderful noodle maker and baked a calamondin roll:

Okay, I have to get out there and take more farm pictures for my blog posts!

Amusing, Belize

One of Those Days…

January 23, 2021 Munchkin

Do you ever get one of those days that you can’t get anything done or it takes ages to get something done that normally takes 10 minutes? I am having one of those days.

This morning, Gnome woke me up with a sudden jolt. He was dreaming and shouted, ‘Explosion!!!‘ in his sleep. I woke up and exclaimed, ‘…what…explosion??‘

I got such a shocking wake up that I pulled the muscle in the back of my leg…owhhhh!!! Ouch!!!

Ouch!!!!

So, while I was trying to wake up properly and massage the strained muscle in my leg, Gnome told me about his dream. He said that he was trying to pick up huge melons on the ground and because they were so ripe, they were exploding.

So, Gnome was dreaming about exploding fruit. I am not surprised that Gnome dreams about things like that.

Anyway, after being rudely woken up this morning, nothing felt right. The kittens were whining from the get-go and the gaggle of geese were in the throes of war and acting up more than normal. I stumbled about with my sore leg and spilled the tea. Oh dear…

Time to Stop!!

Oh and then I tried to write some text messages to organise some things in the outside world (I like my ducks in a row!!) and none of them would send properly.

Okay, I got the message. I finally stopped…my leg was hurting so now I have it up on a stool, resting on a cushion. Gnome has put Crazy Cat on my lap and he has told me not to move.

I think that’s it for the day! It’s just one of those days!!

Belize, Food

Dumplings With Munchkin &Gnome!!

January 22, 2021 Munchkin

How is that for a catchy title. This one is about the noodle maker again…cannot help it…we love the machine!! With the pasta sheets that you make, you can them cut them into round skins to make dumplings. This post is more of a Picture Blog!!

Pasta sheets:

More pasta sheets:

We put a round bowl over the sheet and then used a sharp knife to cut around it to make round dumpling skins:

The noodle maker actually does come with a small dumpling maker. We did try to use it but it was teeny…you could only put one teaspoon of filling into it. It was laborious and tedious and we gave up after making about three of them. For our appetites, we would want to eat at least 50 between the two of us. It wasn’t worth the mess that it made because we tended to want to over-fill the dumpling and in the process of closing , a whole load of gooey mess would splat and splash everywhere. Splat…

After this, we took out our own dumpling maker…it is metal and a lot bigger…you can fill it with about 2 to 3 tablespoons of filling. Once you get into the swing of things, making fifty took about two hours. This would be the equivalent of about 8 meals for us. This was more fun and the larger size allowed easier filling and less splatting:

Some more dumplings:

We thought that having green dumplings looked really cool but when we fried them, they lost the colour and they just had that ubiquitous fried look. We won’t bother with the colour next time!

Okay, that is it for the dumpling blog post…something to do on a rainy day…talking of rain…it has been raining non-stop for days…

Amusing, Belize, Pets

Crazy Cat Update!

January 21, 2021 Munchkin

Oh, you might be wondering what is happening with the two kittens. Well, first of all, honeymoon is over! All they want to do is eat and sleep! I know that they are too young to be fully fledged rat catchers but it would be nice to see some other activity besides ‘hunting’ the Munchkin and begging for food all the time. They get raw meat in the morning and the evening…this is to get them used to eating (and catching) rats and other prey. I learned to feed farm cats this way from an old Belizean lady (who loved cats and owned a female cat that was perpetually pregnant or suckling). This old lady had probably raised more than 100 kittens so I took her word for it. Besides, with our first farm cat, I fed him cooked food (I was afraid of parasites and worm infestations) and as a result of this upbringing he was always digging in the trash looking for scraps of cooked food. We called him ‘Garbage Cat.’ Now it is raw meat and regular worming tablets…yes, look at my ‘active’ farm cats…

Lately, I have been getting annoyed with them (Lazy good for nothing blah blah blah!).

The two kittens are left under the house and night and in the morning, they are allowed into the house. They are fed very well before they enter the house but as soon as they come in, they start sniffing around for food and bits of crumbs everywhere. Whenever, we are eating, they whine and try to scrabble on our laps. What terrible behaviour!! Okay, so Gnome had to intervene since I was getting quite upset about it all.

Gnome: ‘Munchkin, may I make a suggestion? Don’t have the cats around when you are preparing food, eating food or processing food…they always go crazy when this is happening.’

Okay, so I followed his suggestion. The thing is…I am always ‘sorting out food’…I cook breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday!! Not to mention the cups of tea in between. That day, I was also canning meat and broth. Oh, I forgot to mention that when Gnome makes pasta…they go crazy running about for bits of dough flying about! Gnome’s suggestion works but because of the nature of my (our) daily activities, I can only allow the cats in for about one hour a day!

Anyway, hopefully they will learn manners as they get older! The Crazy Cat (the feral cat) has actually become very friendly and personable. When he isn’t hungry (which is most of the time) he will climb onto our laps and sit! Yes, he is sitting…I suppose that is a break-through…

Have we tamed Crazy Cat??!!

Belize, Food, 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.

Amusing, Belize

New Public Holiday!

January 15, 2021 Munchkin

Another holiday! Didn’t we just have one??

Oh, it’s a new public holiday in Belize today! Happy George Price Holiday to y’all!! George Price was a very well known Belizean Statesman who served as First Minister and Premier under British rule and served as the first Prime Minister after Belize was made independent in 1981. Yes, so we are having another holiday again…didn’t we just have a great big holiday about two weeks ago? So, we went into town yesterday for the first time after the new year.

Every single person we spoke to said:

‘….oh! It’s another holiday tomorrow. George Price Public Holiday.’

Followed quickly by:

‘…didn’t we just have a holiday?’

So, we’ve been told that they wanted to do away with Christopher Columbus Holiday which is the 12th of October. The next question on everyone’s mind was:

‘…so, we don’t get the October holiday any-more??!!’

Belize, Food

Holiday Pictures!

January 12, 2021 Munchkin

I am sure that you have taken down all the Christmas decorations by now but I still have some holiday pictures to catch up with. Just one festive one and the rest are just things that we did around that time. How time passes quickly…Christmas has come and gone in the blink of an eye.

This a picture of a piece of black cake that we received from a friend. I don’t want to talk like I am any authority on black cake (because I am not) but it seems to me that the main ingredients are sugar (brown or white, plus or minus molasses), caramel colouring for the black colour, fruit, nuts and rum. Every household has their personal black cake recipe and every household has the best black cake recipe!! It is hard to compare because they can be so different…some people prepare their own fruits months ahead and some don’t even bother with fruit and nut. Essentially (I think) the most important thing is that it is black in colour. Anyway, this year we had the pleasure of a few of these as gifts…Thank-you to all!! A slice with a cup of tea is quite nice…this one has a drizzle of our Chocolate Velvet to make it even more sumptuous.

I think that I mentioned that we had Christmas ham and that we had a lot of left-overs. On Boxing day, we made dumpling sheets from our wonderful Chinese noodle maker:

We made ham and potato dumplings with the skins. It took us the whole morning but we managed to finish up all our left-overs.

We froze most of these so that we can have ‘fast food’ now and then. They are delicious deep-fried or steamed. We had them deep-fried for a treat on Boxing Day. It was a nice way to pass the day…just Munchkin and Gnome with the cats!

Oh yes…the cats…peace (for one day) on Christmas Day…they slept the entire day and night because it was sooooo cold!!

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

Army Ants!!

January 7, 2021 Munchkin

The army ants came back yesterday!! They came up through the front veranda and then up through the back. Awwwhhh!!! They just came around on New Year’s Day and utterly destroyed a live wasp nest, removing it piece by piece. This was really amazing to watch …they dangled like a long piece of string from the nest…every wasp was attacked, over-powered and carried away. Look at this…how extraordinary!!

When the ants come around, it is truly an invasion. The best thing to do is to get out of the house and wait outside until they have scoured every inch of your house looking for insects, scorpions and spiders to carry off and devour. There is quite an extensive article on army ants in Wiki so I won’t re-hash all the information on my Blog. However, it is interesting to point out that their trails can get to 20 metres wide and 100 metres in length! They do not have permanent nests so they are constantly moving and foraging all the time. Since they are such aggressive foragers, they can also pick up small birds along their path…

If you happen to get in the way, these ants do bite. This happened to me once, a long time ago; I reacted really badly to a single bite on my foot and had severe urticaria…Gnome actually had to take me to hospital because I was in such an awful state. Now I know better…as soon as I see them trooping in…I cover myself up entirely and run out of the house!!

Because of the second visit, we had to take another day off. I didn’t complain about it because I did feel very tired and it was a welcome break!! Keep save every-one and don’t let the army ants bite or carry away any of your precious pets!!

Casa Mascia Apothecary