Forget pumpkin spice season…It’s dragon fruit season at our place. Currently we have 25-30 in the fridge, some of them are the size of baseballs and then some of the bigger ones weigh a pound and a half each. We can only eat so many for breakfast, so it was time to get a little creative with them.

Restaurants usually have some type of sweet and spicy chicken wings such as pineapple-habanero or mango-habanero, so why not dragon fruit-habanero. Kelley mixed up a dragon fruit-habanero sauce for some wings and we gave them a try. They had a good spice to them, but were not quite as sweet as if you used a different fruit. It really messed with your mind eating purple chicken wings and not your normal orange ones like everyone is use to. Overall they were very good, yet really messy.

Since we were playing with dragon fruit, why not make a dessert? Kelley made up a cheesecake where she put half of the filling in a graham cracker crust and then mixed in dragon fruit for the other half. After that, she reduced some dragon fruit on the stove and added sugar for a nice sweet purple topping. The color of our dragon fruit is just so intense, it’s really a lot of fun when you start thinking of all the different things you could do with it.

We are still making a lot of sausage and other types of meats. The one we have had a lot of requests for is a good Mexican style chorizo. For some reason it’s almost impossible to find any chorizo in Belize, they do sell a longanisa, but it’s not the same. Over the past few years, we have been trying to come up with a recipe that we think meets our standards. Every time we would make a batch it was good, but not quite what we were looking for. We finally got the recipe dialed into where we were satisfied with it, and now feel comfortable offering it to others.

Another sausage that we have been trying to perfect is a Texas style hot link sausage. After a lot of trial and error, we have finally got it to where we are satisfied with them. For the longest time the spices weren’t quite right, the smoking process wasn’t what we were looking for or they were too crumbly when you cut into them. Now we are happy with them and soon we will have mesquite smoked Texas style hot links added to our list of meats we offer.

We just picked up another five pounds of habaneros from our local produce stand. And talk about fresh, we told them that we were looking for big red ones and they said that they would pick some for us the next day. Within a few hours of them picking them we had a big bag full sitting on our front porch. Anyway, it was time for us to dehydrate them and start making some more of our habanero salt. Our habanero salt is way too spicy for the average person, but there is a whole lot of people who just can’t get enough of it.

I mentioned a while ago about our Butterfly Pea Vine flowers that turn hot water blue. Well, we finally had enough flowers to check it out. We poured some hot water over some of the dried flowers and instantly the water turned blue. Then we added a few drops of lemon juice and instantly the water changed from blue to purple. The flowers are used as a fabric dye and also natural food coloring to make blue-colored beverages, desserts and even rice. It would be interesting to make some blue or purple colored rice for some sushi rolls. I’m sure once our vine takes off and we have a lot of flowers, we’ll find something interesting to do with them.

When we were first putting in plants around the house, we bought four red cordylines to put near the front porch. When they would get too big we would cut them back and stick the cuttings in the ground. Now we have well over a hundred cordylines around the yard all from those first four plants. Like I’ve said before, everything just grows down here.

We just got back from another long weekend down at Hopkins Bay Resort. This was the last of our deals where earlier this year we paid for one night and got two more nights free. Besides it was going to expire at the end of the month, so we needed to use it. Amanda had also purchased one of those deals, so she tagged along with us. We had no plans for the weekend, just being at the beach, hanging out in the pool and enjoying a few cold ones.

We let Ron and Rhonda know that we were going to be in Hopkins, and they made the one hour drive up from Placencia to join us for the weekend. We spent a lot of time in the pools, getting a lot of sun, doing a little bar hopping and of course, catching a few NFL games on Sunday.

One morning we booked a river cruise up the Sittee River just to get out on the water and see what wildlife we could spot. Since we picked a late morning time there really wasn’t a whole lot of animals moving around. Still, there were birds, big orange iguanas, and turtles, but that was about it.

Ron & Rhonda and Amanda had never been on the Sittee River before, so it was great for them to see another section of Belize cruising along the river through all the mangroves. Our guide was very knowledgeable and we learned a bunch of interesting things we didn’t already know about. If you are in Hopkins and looking for something to do that doesn’t involve the beach, take a cruise up the Sittee River. If you go in the morning or evening there is a better chance of seeing crocodiles or manatees. This is also where the bioluminescence tours leave from during certain times of the year. Or if you like to fish, but get a little queasy out on the open water, they offer river fishing where it’s always calm.

Not too long ago we took some of our meats down to a friend in Hopkins. We let her know that we were coming back and to see if she needed anything. I guess she told some friends about us and set up a group chat. This trip down to Hopkins we ended up taking a big ice chest with well over 60 lbs. of bacon and other sausages. On Friday everyone met us at Mango’s Beach Bar and picked up their orders. By Sunday we were back at Mango’s and people who didn’t know about it were wondering how they could get on the list for next time. Over the next week, we had a lot of people reaching out to us to tell us how good everything was. So it looks like next trip to Hopkins we might be taking a couple of big ice chests full of meat, and that’s fine with us.

They say keeping busy keeps you young. I’d hate to see us if we weren’t so busy all the time.😁😁😁