Hello, I am writing a bit more since we are both stuck at home. Gnome’s neck injury is getting better but as soon as he tries to do any type of lifting, the pain comes back again. I am giving him a full week and will re-assess for light activity on Wednesday. He is keeping his humour up and is reading up on silly things like Groundhog Day (which was yesterday) and asking me if I would eat a groundhog; my answer was “Yes…I am Chinese…the Chinese will eat everything!” Oh yeah, he was also looking at the protein content of millipedes to see if we could supplement our diet with it! He’s not kidding by the way…he’s also asked me to re-start the wormery as a protein source and asked me: “…how would you cook them?” and I cheekily replied with,”…Kung-po Worm! Sweet and Sour Worm, name any Chinese-Style and I will make it into a worm dish. I am of course not kidding too and will in the future post up worm dishes once I get enough of them to eat.

Talking of food…this year we have early jackfruit from a newly bearing tree. The tree is about 30 yards from the house in an area away from our normal walkways. We didn’t notice until this week when the geese stopped going to the pond in the morning. We scratched our heads and wondered what was the matter and then we saw the main goosie group camping under a jackfruit tree. Any other goose (not from their group) that happened to cross their path would get pecked and screeched at.

On closer inspection, we saw that a ripe jackfruit had fallen to the ground and head goosie was pecking at the fruit as if he was trying to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the “Fastest Time a jackfruit can be eaten by a goose in one sitting.” Then we stared up at the tree and saw four humongous jackfruit just ripe for the picking. Aha, the dastardly geese were waiting for the next one to fall down and feast upon! We managed to harvest just in time…look at these beauties:

We normally harvest jackfruit on our farm in July and August. February is very early but it is actually a better time because with the dry weather at this time of the year, they are less likely to rot and get damaged by torrential rain. Plus, this is an unusual time for fruit trees to produce so it is a welcome harvest on the farm.

Yesterday, I prepared one of the jackfruits and attempted to process it in a different way; Gnome’s mother had sent me a link where there was a very skilled person peeling the fruit in a spiral-like manner in a matter of minutes.

utube.com/Nila’s Kitchen

It was one of those videos that made it look so easy peasy! Well, I tried it and found that the jackfruit was too heavy (20lbs/ 10kgs) to manipulate in this way. I did however modify the method by cutting it into 3 inch rings and peeling the rings from the central core… then the fruit could be readily popped out like on the video. This took me less time compared to my old method…30 minutes instead of one hour so I will continue with the new improved approach. Once I am more skilled, I might be able to spiralise it and make a 2 minute video!!

Jackfruit:

Okay, I will write more since we can’t get out right now to do farm work!!

Okay, so when we got up this morning, the sun was out but then the dark clouds moved in and then the sun peaked again and then, alas, there were clouds piling up from the east…oh, but then there was a bit of sun coming out again.  We checked the weather report and it said there was a 50% chance of rain and 50% chance of no rain.  When Panda came at 9am to help out on the farm, we sent him home since it started drizzling , the black clouds were gathering and there was a lot of thunder.  As soon as he left, the sun came out again.  The weather went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until I could stand it no more.  Gnome realised I was turning into Crazy Munchkin so said,

“Okay, let’s stay indoors and make it a jackfruit day.”

(Thank God for sensible, no nonsense and practical Gnomes).

Well, you might have seen our jackfruits already…they are huge.  Gnome cut them in half and I separated the seeds from the flesh.

Prepared Fruit:

We cleaned two huge jackfruit which took about 1 and 1/2 hours.  It is really hard work, by the way, but I shouldn’t complain because it is a tonne of food.

I haven’t enjoyed eating the seeds in the past…we found them rather mealy and disappointing.  This time however, our harvest was from a different  tree; the boiled seeds were surprisingly good and did actually taste of chestnuts.  There must have been about 10lbs of jackfruit seeds.

Once you boil the seed, there is an outer covering which you need to take off.  Here is a close up picture of a cooked jackfruit seed cut in half:

Our plan is to dry the boiled seeds in the sun (what sun??!!) and once they have dried, we will ground them into flour.  That’s the plan anyway…

So today, we stuffed ourselves full of jackfruit and the boiled seeds.  I think we over-ate a wee bit because we both have sore stomachs right now.  We are trying to settle our symptoms down with some peppermint tea.  😉

The rest of the fruit is being boiled up, as we speak, for wine; it is a murky mess right now but hopefully in a year, it will look like this:

So what’s it going to be tomorrow??  Sunny or Rainy.  🙂

Oh I might make marron glacé with the jackfruit nuts if I am in a good mood tomorrow….