Nothing really exciting has been happening around here lately. A lot of trimming plants and cleaning up the yard, but nothing anyone will ever notice. We have had dry weather for the past few weeks and the temps have been perfect. The daytime highs are in the upper 80°s and the evenings drop down into the mid 60°s, which is great in my opinion. This allows you to get out and soak in that warm sunshine during the day and then cuddle up with a nice warm blanket in the evenings.  We did have a cold snap come through for a couple of days where we saw a low of 56°. I know that’s not cold for a lot of people, but for us, it was quite chilly. Now for the past week, we’ve had rain daily and everything is very wet and muddy, you just never know what to expect this time of year.

There are a lot of cacao pods on our plants right now and they are starting to ripen. Which means that the house has a nice sweet aroma in the air as the cacao seeds start to ferment. After they ferment for a while, they will set out on the porch in the sun to dry before being roasted. We still have around 25 lbs. of dried seeds from earlier this year, so we really need to find some time to make more chocolate.

Our coffee is also starting to ripen and the trees all have a good amount on them. It’s quite a long process going from bean to cup. I only drink one cup a day and Kelley can’t even stand the smell of coffee. Every so often I will brew some, but It’s a lot easier for me to just make one cup of instant every morning. This next year I just need to suck it up and start brewing a pot of our own coffee, after all that’s why we started growing it.

A while back we made a batch of chocolate, coffee, and raspberry liqueurs with fresh ingredients from the garden and they all turned out great. We had some vodka left over from making those, so we decided to make up one more batch. We had a big jug of caramels that we use sometimes when we are making chocolates, so we thought we would try some caramel liqueur. They all turned out very good on their own, but when you start mixing them together they get even better. Chocolate/raspberry or chocolate/caramel mixed together are very good and almost taste like a boozy candy bar. I bet these would even be very tasty in some hot chocolate on a chilly night.

Thanksgiving was a couple of weeks ago and I’m sure most of you back in the States had a big turkey dinner with friends and family. We were no exception, Kelley cooked up a traditional turkey, and friends brought over sides to go with it. A lot of the restaurants in Belize offer up a turkey or ham dinner on the American holiday. They usually put their own tropical twist on the meal, like rum-glazed ham, coconut rice and beans, potato salad, or bread pudding. I’ve even seen lobster as the main course on a Thanksgiving menu. It doesn’t matter what you eat as long as it’s good.

Recently we had a big bag of Blue Diamond almonds that were starting to go a little stale. They were still good, just didn’t have that sharp crispness that they usually have. So we decided to put them in the oven at 350° for 15 minutes and then put them in the food processor with a little salt. After about 15 minutes in the processor, we had some really good tasting almond butter. I love it when you can take something that you would normally throw away and turn it into something useful.

We have been very busy making and stockpiling our meats for the holidays. Currently we have breakfast sausage, Mexican style chorizo, Italian sausage, bacon, bratwurst and summer sausage. As soon as we posted that these were available, we sold out in just a few days. So far this year we have processed close to 1,000 lbs. of pork and beef, it is no wonder we don’t have time to make more chocolate.

There are always a lot of butterflies around here, but currently, there seems to be more than usual. They are in all colors of the rainbow and almost daily we will see one we’ve never seen before. They are all beautiful, but to us, our favorite ones are the big Blue Morpho butterflies. Blue Morphos are among some of the biggest butterflies in the world and are very territorial. This time of year we will see them everywhere just floating around the yard. Since they are very territorial, hopefully, they will always be around our place for us to enjoy.

The other day we heard some bird calls that we didn’t recognize, luckily Kelley has an app on her phone that would identify them. We finally got a glimpse of them and they were just what the app said they were. They were Montezuma Oropendolas, a bird that we had never seen around here before. They are a rather large bird, the male is twice the size of the female at about 20″ long and can weigh up to 18 oz. The female builds a long hanging woven nest that is anywhere between 24-71 inches long. There are usually at least 30 nests in a colony, where the dominant male will mate with most of the females. And in case you are wondering what their call sounds like it is “tic-tic-glik-glak-GLUUuuuuu”.

We hear a lot of bird calls around here that we don’t actually recognize and we can’t always get a picture of them. At least Kelley has an app on her phone that listens to the bird’s call and then identifies what it is. The app is called “Merlin Bird ID” and all you do is hold your phone up so it can hear the bird call and it will tell you what bird it is along with pictures. This app should work anywhere, so next time you’re out hiking or something, give it a try and see what different birds are around you.

It’s that time of year again when everyone gets in the holiday spirit with their Christmas lights, trees and other decorations. This year we just didn’t have time to get our tree up, but we did manage to get a few other small decorations out. And I did at least get some lights up around the outside of the house. Although we’re about the only ones who will actually see the lights on the house, it still helps to get us in the holiday spirit.

Hope everyone has a happy and healthy holiday season, and maybe we’ll see you down here next year.