With so many funny animal stories coming from our blog, I have neglected to talk about other stuff that we do. We have a new Chocolate-Mint soap. It’s chocolatey and has the zing of mint!! (As I am writing this, Gnome is murmuring under his breath…Munchkin, is this your idea of marketing??).
Ha-Ha…
We just dropped some off at the Chocolate Factory (Cotton Tree Chocolate) in Punta Gorda today:
Cotton Tree Chocolate.
Lovely soap made by Munchkin and Gnome; made from coconut oil and chocolate. Picture Munchkin and Gnome stirring a metal cauldron in the middle of the bush…
Chocolate Soap Making.
We make this stuff on the farm:
Chocolate Artisan Soaps.
If you are not in Punta Gorda, Belize…check out our Chocolate Artisan Soaps in The Apothecary.
We have a range of Chocolate Artisan Soaps and four scented chocolate soaps: chocolate-vanilla, chocolate-mango, chocolate-orange and chocolate-mint.
As an interesting aside, we have noticed that having a website does not actually decrease the administrative work involved in running a business. There are still a gazillion back and forth emails to write. What we have come to realise is that even although everything can be ordered on a website with the minimum of communication, everyone still wants the personal touch. So, we are happy to receive email orders and have a personal relationship with you, if you prefer.
We have just made a delivery of freshly made lip balms to the Cotton Tree Chocolate Factory in Punta Gorda. This is a must-have for all chocolate lovers out there! They are made from real chocolate, cacao butter for extra smoothness and honey! They are available as Chocolate Smoothie Lip Balm or Orange Chocolate Smoothie Lip Balm.
Yum!!! Another dessert from the Munchkin kitchen: Coconut Squares with Chocolate Drizzle. This dessert is soft and richly textured and it is so easy to make. The chocolate sauce is made from coconut cream too!
Coconut Square with Chocolate Drizzle.
Yes, you may have guessed it…torrential rain every night so that the farm is covered in puddles (getting to pools actually). So, what else can I do but sequester myself in the kitchen and cook up yummy stuff with our lovely coconuts!
Our Lovely Coconuts.Freshly Grated Coconuts.
The chocolate sauce complements the sweet very well; it is made from Cotton Tree Chocolate:
Hello Everyone!! It is so difficult finding a time slot to write a post; right now, the Internet is reliable from 4am to about 8am…this is however, our outside farm time and business emailing. After 8am, the Internet is virtually non-existent with a few minutes, now and then, of Internet activity to download emails. Not enough to quickly write a post for a Blog. At about 5pm, the Internet starts back up in spits and spurts…this is when I dive in and take my opportunity. After 6pm, Gnome uses the computer/ Internet to do Linux stuff. Oh and by the way, we share the one computer so that also limits usage.
Sometimes, because of all these complications, there is simply no opportunity to write a post. Hence, the reason why you might get short periods of silence.
Anyway, it was town day today. Instead of waking up at 4am, we made a compromise and woke up at 6am. This is still really early because nothing really starts opening in Punta Gorda until about 9am. The Government offices start at 8am but they aren’t really getting down to business until a later in the morning. If you ask me…the best time to go a Government Office is at 11.30am which is just before lunch. Don’t go at 11.45am because they will already be enroute to their favourite Rice and Beans joint. Supermarkets (the majority are Chinese owned) open after 9am…the Chinese can be a tad tardy and if you drive pass one of this places, you usually see the Belizean workers loitering outside waiting for their Chinese bosses to open shop. It is all very slow and everyone takes their own sweet time to start up.
So, at 6am, we were up and jumping about like hyperactive frogs waiting for the faithful opening hour. Gnome was laughing at the fact that we had to wait three hours for everyone else to start. It is extraordinary how farm life works on a completely different time line from town life! Anyway, we mixed up a batch of chocolate soap in the interim:
Making Chocolate Soap.
We are making Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate and White Cocao Butter soap for the new tourist season in November. This is the Milk Chocolate Soap:
Solid Chocolate Soap.
Oooooh…looks like you could eat them!!
Anyway, we managed to get into town…trundling along slowly. Here are some pictures of places that we frequent in Punta Gorda.
We usually pick up the “chocolate trash” from The Cotton Tree Chocolate Factory. We use the trash for mulch around our trees:
Cotton Tree Chocolate.Chocolate Waste For Our Trees.
And this is Tropic Air; we deliver all our orders nation-wide with Tropic Air because they are reliable, very friendly and they have a flight everyday so orders can be dispatched on the same day (yes…you can get 24 hour delivery in Belize).
Tropic Air Office.
The staff are absolutely lovely:
Tropic Air Staff.
After town, we went to visit our friend Isabel at Cotton Tree Lodge.
It was really muddy and wet driving up to the lodge. At one point, our wheels nearly got stuck…we had to go on 4-wheel drive for the whole time. Boy, what a drive…the heavy rains have really made these back roads difficult to travel in.
Ha-ha…this is a real picture of us at last!! We have been messing around with the computer to see if we can use it to take pictures for the posts. I am sure you would recognise us now if you saw us on the street!!
Phew!! We have been working hard on the farm! Gnome has procured his big stick for knocking down coconuts and so we are back to processing them again.
Freshly Grated Coconut.
We are back to making coconut water and coconut cream for the local market. Also, we grate coconut for Cotton Tree Chocolate for their coconut bars.
Cotton Tree Chocolate Bars.
I really do need to get a camera because I have so many exciting things to show you. I have been preparing bamboo shoots:
Bamboo Shoot.
I want to show you step by step how to prepare, cook and preserve bamboo shoots. It is really quite simple but it just requires time and dedication.
Also, we have had huge bunches of peach palm. So much food on the farm, it’s coming out of our ears!! And the dogs are getting fat. Gnome says that we need a couple of pigs and a gaggle of geese to eat all the food!!
