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!!
A few months back at an Elixir Tasting at Cotton Tree Lodge, I took the liberty of describing the plethora of jobs that Gnome had undertaken in working independently on the farm. Not only has he been a medical doctor for 20 years but he is the on-site engineer, mechanic, plumber, electrician, farmer, soap-maker, wine/ liqueur maker, herbalist and generator of great and amazing ideas. One woman in the group after listening to the description said gleefully,
“If I had my own private island, I want you both on it!”
I feel that he definitely deserves acknowledgement for everything that he does. Because I am usually the spokesperson for us, a lot people don’t realise that we are living our idealistic philosophy because Gnome has the tremendous strength the carry it forth and keep it going.
Here’s one for Gnome! Hip Hip Hooray!!
Gnome Buddy Does It Better:
More harvests from the farm…the ducks have been laying so we have been eating lovely eggs. Here in Belize, the shop bought eggs are really, really bad…they are runny and the yolks are anaemic. You can’t even make a proper custard with them…believe me, I have tried and I ended up with a yellow snot that won’t thicken. Thanks to our Zazen duckies for their contribution to the farm!
Look at the lovely fresh eggs…
I’d love an egg mold to make flower-shaped eggs like these…
I asked Gnome to make me one and he replied with,
“…add it to the list dearest…you might get it in a couple of years time if you’re lucky.”
And I said,
“Oh.”
Oh what a shame!
A while back, we received a few interesting and useful gifts from a visiting friend. Since a lot of these things can’t be found in Belize, I’d like to go through them (if you will allow me to indulge). Good quality items are hard to come by in Belize so we were really pleased to receive this stuff.
This is a “MicroPlane” zester. If you make limoncello, you will understand why this one is a God-send. Previously, we used a sharp pocket knife to pain-stakingly zest lemons and limes for our Elixirs. I am not trying to be an advertisement for this little gadget but it I can now remove the zest from a lime (sans pith) in less than 60 seconds!
Great fun in the kitchen…
We have been looking for a cherry pitter for years. I made the mistake of asking somebody from North Carolina to purchase one for me and he replied with:
“Down South, we don’t have no cherries to pit!”
At that point, I made the realisation that Northern America was a very big place and I had to look further north for a cherry pitter! Anyway, this one is for pitting suriname cherry (a sweet red, ridged cherry with a distinct resinous taste) in Belize.
Yes, you can get vegetable peelers in Belize but they are your usual Made In China Piece of Crap (MCPC, for short!). Yes, I am going to rave on about a potato peeler of all things because so far, after peeling about 22lbs (10kg) of Cassava it’s still intact!
The last item is a bottle of Absinthe which we had never tasted before. It boasts a complexity of herbs which we thought would be interesting. However, for our personal tastes, we would have liked it better if it was bitter because we like the taste of wormwood. This particular brand has a very strong anise flavour ;)…Hic!! Thanks For The Gifts!!
Fry Jacks are puffed up fried dough eaten traditionally in Belize for breakfast. They are usually served with refried beans or eggs. I love fry jacks but I have never been able to achieve a good result with recipes found on the Internet. I mentioned this in passing to a Belizean friend and she was aghast at the fact that I had not mastered the art of Fry Jacks after all these years and promptly organised a lesson for me.
This is the authentic Fry Jack Recipe. It works great and the end result is a light puffed up fried dough.
Oooooh!!! I made these ones…
Thank-you Francisca!!
Oooooh! We got a whole load of goodies from Singapore. It always feels like Christmas when we open up the box and let all the lovely South-East Asian jars, bottles and silver-foiled packets roll out. We really miss Real Chinese food!!
This was a Chinese New Year pack and so we received various celebration food including mini prawn samosas and almond cookies. Oh, and there was a nice packet of TimTams (chocolate covered biscuit that is great dipped in tea). If you are from the UK, it’s like a classier version of the Penguin biscuit.
Many Thanks to our Sinagapore connection for the wonderful gifts. I even got a jar of Penang curry powder…can’t wait to try it with my coconut curry!
You might recall that in a previous post which was written about 2 months ago, I had expressed the need for a desk lamp. In fact, I had been quite explicit about it because the post was named “I Need A Desk Lamp.”
I had actually posted this at the time because I was really rather desperate for one as I wanted a close-up light to hand-sew. At that time, Gnome advised me to ask for it directly in order to prove or disprove the idea of “ask and you shall receive.” I was a bit cynical but decided that it was worth the try…besides I couldn’t find one in Belize.
On New Year’s Day I reminded Gnome of this intention that I had made and rather glumly said to him that I did not receive a desk lamp so I had to disprove the theory. Gnome replied by saying,
“Maybe it just hasn’t come yet.”
I shrugged my shoulders and let it go.
Then this happened today. Whenever we get all sorts of computer stuff that we no longer need to use but still works, we usually give it away to guy in Punta Gorda who “does computers” so that he can add it to his graveyard of electronics. Anyway, we went to see him today to give him stuff and he was so appreciative that he offered a “free room” in his shop on the off chance that we were stranded in town for the night. He also gave us this:
When Gnome saw this, he beamed a knowing smile at me. When I saw this, I grinned back!!
Too funny, right? And this guy has never read my Blog or seen my statement of intent. What are the chances of that?
Anyway, Thank-you!! And another big Thank-you to Paul for his gift of speakers. Now we can listen to our favourite songs in the middle of the jungle.
This one is for you Paul:
I think our local stingless bees are really cute, the species I have nesting in one of my old tool boxes is Tetragonisca angustula…
They are nice and friendly and you don’t need any fancy beekeeping equipment since they don’t sting. It seems like a better start to beekeeping to me than going for Africanized Bees.
They don’t make much honey apparently, only about 1kg a year but what they do make is supposed to be very medicinal…which is right up my alley. They are also good pollinators for assorted crops.
Anyway, the point of all of this is that I made a couple of beehives in order to get this project underway…
Yeah, I know, it doesn’t look like much and I suck at taking photographs (but I am better at stitching up your face with some 7/0 prolene, thankfully…sorry doctor joke!).
If you are interested, there is more detail in constructing the hives in Bored-In-Belize…Making a Stingless-bee Bee Hive.
With the amount of honey these little darlings make, I’ll probably have to make about 100 hives…one day at a time…
Thank you to Leanne and Craig Knox for giving me the idea.
Cheers and have a good day!
I would like to take this opportunity to Thank all our readers. We are completely new to the Blogging community having started only 5 weeks ago. It has been encouraging to have “Likes” and “Followers.” This is especially important to us because we had to really work hard to get Internet. Firstly, getting Internet connection required logistics; after all, we do live in a very isolated area in the most rural part of Belize. We had to get on a list and this took a year of weekly visits to the Telecommunications Company. Then, when we got the technicians out to our farm, they had to find a signal with their antenna. Well, that involved very tall ladders, climbing onto the roof of our house, plenty of cool drinks all around and finger food. We finally got a vague signal at about 30 feet from the ground. We were so thankful at that point because we were so close to giving up.
The next part was the installation; this entailed more waiting and weekly visits to the office. Meanwhile, Gnome erected a 40 foot post next to the house single-handedly with a clever system of pulleys and lots of time and patience. When the technicians finally arrived they took one look at the post and got scared. They said that they would have to call the boss in to permit the use of such a big post. The post was a 12 inch tree trunk!
Anyway, after a bit more time (weeks!!!) we did finally get the antenna and we had Internet happening! The final height of the antenna was 60 feet.
Before all this, we had lived without Internet connection for 10 years. We used the Internet cafe weekly to email and that was about all we could do because of the limitations of traveling into town and the slow Internet connection. Truth be told, we were actually fine with our limited technological interaction.
However, after a lot of thinking we decided to embrace technology again so that we can reach out to more people. We would like to show people that they can choose to live a simple way of life, down-size and live off the fruits of their own labour. It is my hope that our regular posts reflect our enjoyment in living a simple life. Thank you for reading our stuff!
