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!!