We had the pleasure of our first bearing mango tree this year and it was wonderful! We ate mangoes non-stop for 4 weeks!! This type of mango, that we have on our farm is the smooth, hairless (sans fibre) kind with a taste reminiscent of syrupy canned peaches.
We enjoyed our last big bowl of mangoes today. For a treat, we drizzled Lemongrass Elixir to give it extra oomph!!
Boozy Mangoes:
A Big Thank you to our Mango Tree!!
Here is a gallery of fruits in season. We are so fortunate that even with the extended dry season, the fruit trees still continue to bear. Mangoes are my definite favourite; I remember buying them in the supermarket in Scotland and they were as hard as rocks. Sometimes they wouldn’t even ripen at all! It’s wonderful that I don’t need to buy these from the supermarket anymore…I have them in my own backyard.
This is the season for mamey sapote; when you cut them in half, the flesh is orange-brown with a thick consistency like avocado. They have a very intense caramel flavour and are best eaten chilled.
The wax apples are starting on our trees; however with the drought, they look very small. The upside of this is that due to the reduced water content in them, they are very sweet.
Hi Everyone!! The heavy night time rains have stopped for a few days and there are less puddles around the farm. The grass is long (again) and we are gearing up for another big clean up. Didn’t we just do that already?? Here are some pictures which I took whilst trudging about in my rubber boots…I try not to walk in deep puddles because I have a hole in one of my boots!
We have lovely purple basil growing which will be processed into pesto:
The last of the cashew fruit for the season…we have really enjoyed cooking with them this year in savoury dishes. Note also the funny looking bug on the green fruit.
These are bilimbi fruit which are really, really sour. So, far I haven’t found anything too exciting to do with these except for stir frys and soups. Any ideas?? Here in Belize, some people like to make a juice out of them but I personally find them a tad too tart.
This flower is of the Aristolochia sp.; they are start off looking like this and at this stage we call them alien pods:
When they open up they look like this and they exude an odious carrion-like smell to attract flies for pollination.
Beautiful baby woodrose flowers. Once the flowers mature, they produce a wood-like pod which looks like a wooden rose.
Sometimes I have to remind myself to stop and admire the beauty on our farm rather than running around like mad trying to achieve agendas. Have a good night everyone!! We are staying in tonight and I have made another one of these Chaos Cinnamon Cakes which I will lavishly drizzle with icing:
Ooooh yum!! We are going through a sweet phase right now!!
Oh, and for the rest of you 93.75% of readers who haven’t voted yet for the Favourite Candidate for the Mayoral Election 2015…Hint Hint!!
Hi Everyone. This morning, poor Gnome woke up with a terrible crick in his neck. Despite this pain, he soldiered on since the weather was looking good…a bright sunny start and we were ready for a big clean up with brush-mowing and coconut palm cleaning!! All of a sudden, grey clouds gathered and blocked out the sun and we had a down-pour at 8am this morning.
And, so the place is still looking bushy:
Gnome took solace in making some more Pet Sulphur and Lime Dip:
Gnome really likes the smell of sulphur; he says he feels cleansed and invigorated from the fumes.
We received a re-order for our new pet product which is used to treat mange, fleas, ticks and ringworm: 
We have decided to recycle old beer bottles to make the product really cheap and affordable. And, so when we went to the Farm Store in Punta Gorda last week, the manager said to Gnome,
“I’d like to order some more Presidente, please!”
Despite removing all the tell-tale beer stickers from the bottle, the farm store manager and workers still recognised the Presidente branded beer bottle! This is a picture of Gnome bottling the Sulphur-Lime Dip…now, also known as Presidente!
Anyway, we tried to keep busy. We harvested our lemons and put them through this cool citrus peeler, which the locals usually use for oranges.
I dry the peel and use it for flavouring of food such as stews, stir frys, soups and of course, limoncello Also, in the process of peeling, we can catch some essential oil from the peel…about 1ml for every 4 lemons and so to get 30mls(1oz) you need 120 lemons in total! Just goes to show the value of a tiny bottle of essential oil…the quantities of biomass never ceases to astound me!
Have a lovely Saturday night!!
We have got a lovely big bunch of green bananas. I counted…172 bananas in this bunch!! Wow, what a lot of food!!
I have been cooking up Pan-Fried Green Bananas:
I used the local spices Tumeric and Chilli Powder (bought from Punta Gorda market, Toledo) to flavour the dish.
We had a yummy Sunday Brunch with these bananas:
This is a great way to eat unripe bananas; they make a hearty and satisfying food. Definitely a tasty way to chomp your way through bananas especially when you have 172 of them!!
Yay…It is a craboo season! Gnome and I relish this time when we can sit together and polish off a huge bowl of this delightful fruit together…day after day until the season finishes.
We have some of these craboo trees (Byrosonima crassifolia) growing voluntarily on our land. The fruits are not mature yet, still at a small green stage. We have to keep a keen eye on them because the blackbirds (Carib Grackles) are scoffing off all our fruit (both unripe and ripe) as if there is no tomorrow. The cheeky buggers!!
Anyway, the taste of craboo fruit is like no other. They are red or yellow in colour, round and soft. The flesh is white and has a distinct unctuous cheese-like fragrance with a background of mild sweetness. They are truly umami and it is a wonderful taste experience.
To get the most of the craboo fruit, they require fermentation in plastic bags for a few days (1 to 3 days depending on the degree of fragrant cheesy flavour you would prefer).
A few years ago, we were given a handy tip by a Belizean who recommended that we placed our craboo fruit inside the car to allow maximal ripening of the fruit. So, you can recognise a true craboo connoisseur if they have bags of craboo sweating away in their car and they are totally non-plussed by the cheesy odour emitting from inside the vehicle.
So far, we have not found any fellow ex-pats who share our love for this unusual tasting fruit. The locals all seem to have the same feverish enthusiasm as us…I have seen Mayans buy ten bags at a time at the market. I have seen the way their eyes ogle at the fruit as they labouriously go through the bags of fruit, looking for the ripest ones. The job of finding the best tasting bags of fruit, becomes an obsessive task. I know this because I stand side by side with all these Mayans man-handling the bags of fruit as we vocalise our anticipation with “ooohs” and “aaahhs” and smile knowingly at each other. I feel that I have been initiated into an esoteric, sacred custom of Belize! 
Gnome says that liking craboo should mean that you have graduated successfully into a fellow local Belizean. It is a well-known fact that it is extremely difficult to get Belizean residency in this country…and there is apparently no logical system to follow in order to gain this status. Gnome has suggested that a bowl of craboo should be placed in front of applicants; if they are seen to be eating craboo fruit with great gusto like a local person, then they should be granted the Belizean status! Knowing all the expats down here in Toledo, I would say that, given this test, they would all be leaving en masse!
We have our first big baby weighing in at a formidable 28lbs (14 kgs).
We have had our eyes on this little one for quite a few months and have affectionately called them our jackfruit “babies” because they resemble giant pods that look like they will burst open at any moment and something alive will pop out of them!
This is the first year that our jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) trees have produced so we are very pleased. Jackfruit can weigh up to about 40 kgs so they give you a lot to eat. We picked this one when it started emitting its characteristic musky fragrance and when the outer shell was pressed, the flesh behind it felt softer.
A word of warning…if you ever get a hold one of these babies, be prepared to spend at least one hour preparing it. Use plenty of newspaper and coat your knives in oil to stop the latex from sticking onto the utensils. Also, wearing rubber gloves (and goggles!) helps so that you are not too immersed in goo and latex. Don’t let any of this worry you…it is definitely worth it!
To prepare, cut the jackfruit into quarters lengthwise. Then cut out the mid-line pith, like so:
The jackfruit is mostly eaten for its delectable arils. Take these out and pop out the seeds. All parts of the jackfruit are edible so do not throw anything out except for the shell. So this is what you get:
The Fruit:
The fruit can be eaten fresh. Our variety is a firm type which we prefer. There are softer varieties which tend to be moist and sweet and have the consistency of snot (still good, though). You can freeze the fruit and eat in the frozen form. They can be used to make desserts such as ice-cream or fruit pie. I really like my fruit savoury, so I am going to stuff some of these with minced pork. Yum! There are plenty of recipes to be found on the Internet; just look up Malaysian, Indian, Ethiopian and Cambodian cuisine to name but a few.
The Seeds:
These can be boiled and eaten as a snack or used as a carbohydrate accompaniment to a meal. They taste like breadnut (also Artocarpus sp.) or chestnuts (if you are from the temperate region). The seeds just need to be boiled for about 20 to 30 minutes until tender and the shell comes off easily.
The Rest:
Don’t throw out the rest of the fruit! A great deal of it is composed of unformed arils which are edible. They tend to be less mature and may have more latex on them. I use this part for cooking in stews, stir-frys and curries. You can also dip them in batter and fry them in oil (like onion rings). Again, this part of the fruit can be stored in the freezer.
We are going to be eating mostly jackfruit…
I have discovered the wonders of cooking cashew fruit and Ioving it! I have managed to get most of the tannic properties out of the fruit by peeling them. At first, I thought that I would peel them llike tomatoes (boil them, take them off the heat quickly and then peel) but when I actually got down to peeling the raw fruit, it wasn’t that difficult. So, here is a picture of the peeled fruit:
Here is a picture of the chopped fruit:
For all you vegetarians out there, this fruit has the texture of chicken breast so you could use the following recipe but omit the sausage. It has a good enough texture to give a satisfying bite.
My recipe is: Pork Sausage and Cashew Fruit Casserole.
I used some curry leaf in the recipe. The Curry plant actually grows very well here in Belize:
We were both very pleased with the cooked cashew fruit! The only problem is that that every single fruit is getting gobbled up by the paca (gibnut) community and as soon as one drops from the tree, it disappears. Gnome says that this is fair exchange for eating two gibnuts a year.
Hello Everyone!! Goosie is recovering very well from his traumatic doggy attack and was released from Farm-ICU today. He made some quiet honks through-out the day and then sounded a loud HONK in the afternoon and drew me his usual dastardly-look to tell me that he was back in action. To top it all off, our missing duckie suddenly reappeared, as if by magic, tonight for feeding time. We had no idea where she had been for the last 24 hours…we tried doing doggy sniffing and patrol all round the farm perimeter today looking for signs of her…and then she just pitched up for food tonight! No questions asked, we quickly ushered her into the coup. Wow…we are so pleased that everything has ended well and all our duckies and goosie are safe.
New things on our farm:
Gnome only uttered one word, “melomel.”
The Kun Batz (Ketchi Mayan name for Belize wild passionfruit) has ripened to an edible fruit and tastes like a cross between a lemon and water-melon…very good!
An unusual wild green pod growing, which we had been watching for 9 months, suddenly exploded. The dried pod looks like a nice ornamental for displaying (soap, maybe?!).
We are going to germinate the seeds because the vessel looks really pretty; it is boat-shaped and could be lacquered to make it last.
We are glad that we can share the highs and lows of our farm life in this Blog!