Usually our very hot and humid months are April and May. This year we were lucky and it didn’t really get hot until mid May. We had a few weeks up around 100° and the humidity was close to the same. So we’ve been trying not to do any big projects around here until next month once the weather calms down a bit. At this point the weather for the next two weeks looks cooler with a chance of rain, hopefully that holds true. In the meantime we’ve been playing with different foods and recipes, after all, we still have to eat.

We see a lot of different types of birds around our place, and when possible, Kelley will try to get some pictures of them. A bird that we seldom see is the Masked Tityra and they just happen to be building a nest in the peak of our garage. For the past few years, the Social Flycatchers have had a nest in the lower of the 2 beams at the top of the garage. I guess this didn’t bother the Masked Tityras as they started building a nest just above them. We assume there are baby birds in there, as the male and female keep flying up there with insects in their mouths. With close to 600 species of birds in Belize, either resident or migratory, I’ll bet we haven’t seen 1/3 of them yet.

A couple of years ago we ordered some corn hole bags that were weatherproof and would not mold in this jungle environment. Well I finally got around to making the boards. In the past I hand-painted the boards with Homer and Bart Simpson on them. This time Kelley and I came up with a design for the “Toucan Hideaway”. Instead of me painting them, we found a company on Amazon that prints vinyl for corn hole boards. The company was great, they will print any design or photo for your boards and they shipped within two days. Once we applied the vinyl, I decided to clear coat them for a little extra protection. We think they turned out awesome and should be a lot of fun.

We’ve been wanting to have some friends over for a fish fry, but we didn’t have enough fish left in the freezer from our last fishing trip. Recently when we were in Hopkins, we asked around and found someone who could get us ten pounds of snook fillets. So Memorial Day weekend (a holiday in the States) we invited a bunch of friends over and fired up our disco for some delicious fried fish. If you don’t know what the disco is, it’s a plow disk for a tractor that has been modified for cooking.

There were about fifteen of us and everybody brought a delicious side dish to go with the fish. It was a great group of people, all the food was delicious, corn hole was played and of course there were some drinks flowing. I now think that snook is my new favorite fish. It was white, flaky, very mild, and delicious with some malt vinegar sprinkled on it.

For the fish fry Kelley made some smoked Barracuda fish dip with cream cheese, mayo, sour cream, parmesan cheese and spices. She has made this a few times before and it’s always a big hit. This time there was some left over, so we thought, why not stuff some jalapeños with it and throw them on the grill? We make jalapeño poppers quite regularly, but usually with a bacon, chicken or shrimp filling. The smoked fish dip in the poppers was delicious, and we will be making this again to share with friends.

After the fish fry we had a few pounds of snook left over. So the next day I made up a basic brine of salt and brown sugar and let the fish soak for a few hours. Then I fired up the smoker with some apple wood chips and sat around with a few cold beers until it was done. I love smoked fish, it’s just that we don’t have as much fish around anymore since we moved away from the beach.

The other day I was out back roasting some green chilis when there was a thump on the roof over the BBQ. I didn’t think too much of it, because I thought it was probably just a branch or something. Then I heard it a couple of more times and I assumed a lizard or a squirrel was up there. Turns out it was a very young toucan that had landed there. When he saw me he flew away, but not before I could call Kelley to get her camera.

I know this isn’t for everybody, but Kelley and I do eat beef liver. Every so often, we will get some from our butcher and Kelley will cut it into finger size pieces, dredge them in flour and fry them up. They are delicious with a little hot sauce on them and a side of fried okra. Anyway, we had some liver in the freezer, so why not try to make some pâté. Kelley found a recipe that sounded good and went to work making some. It was really good on crackers and even better on some toasted sourdough bread. I know a lot of people would never even try this, but then again we both like Braunschweiger and liverwurst, which you can’t find here.

A classic Caribbean dish in Belize is split pea and pigtail soup, which we have had many times and love it. Many of the markets will have a 5 gallon bucket full of pickled pigtails, where you just pick out as many as you want. When we were in Hopkins we picked up some smoked pigtails to try. We were going to just try them plain, but then we thought that they would add great flavor to some split pea soup. So Kelley made up some split pea soup with the smoked pigtails and it was really good. It wasn’t quite like we’ve had here, because we used smoked pigtails not pickled. It was basically a split pea and ham soup. But, like I said about the pâté, it’s not for everybody, but we like it.

It was finally time to grind up our cayenne peppers that had been fermenting for about six weeks. Kelley poured off some of the vinegar that they had been soaking in and saved it. Spicy vinegar is good for lots of things, I especially like it on cooked spinach. Anyway, Kelley ground up the peppers and bottled up the hot sauce. For some reason the yellow cayenne peppers have a fruiter smell to them, but are quite a bit hotter than the red ones. I can’t wait to try this pepper sauce mixed with butter on some chicken wings.

Speaking of spinach, we have Malabar spinach growing in pots. Malabar spinach is a perennial, grows very fast and will get vines up to 30′ long. It tastes like the regular spinach that most people are used to and can be eaten raw or cooked. There are two varieties, the purple vine and the green vine. We had the purple ones growing and then Amanda brought down some seeds from her green ones and they took off fast. As needed, Kelley will cut a foot or so off the plants for different recipes. Malabar spinach should be available at Asian markets in the States, so next time, why not try something a little different?

Around the outside of the house we have pots with different herbs growing in them. We’ve got Basil, Sage, Rosemary, Chives, Oregano, Ginger, Turmeric, and of course Spinach. This makes it really convenient, especially since we are sort of out here a ways, and fresh herbs are sometimes hard to find in the markets.

Our pineapples are finally at the stage where we can start picking a few. At this point the birds have only pecked a hole in one of them. It seems like the electric fence is keeping the other critters away, but we’ll have to see when they really start to ripen. Our grapefruit tree still has a lot of fruit on it and are slowly ripening, which is great that they are not all ready at once. And just when we think we’ve gotten all the starfruit off the tree, there’s a bunch more the next week that we didn’t see.

We’re still having fun with our chocolates. This time we decided to make a version of one of our favorites, a crunch bar. This was a super simple recipe, just melt our chocolate and stir in some Rice Krispies. We made some in our regular candy bar molds and then we did some others in one of our thicker molds so you could really get a big bite of chocolate. All the different chocolate candies we’re making are a little different from the originals, because most of them use milk chocolate and we are using dark chocolate. I’m not a big fan of milk chocolate, but dark chocolate is my weakness and is much healthier for you. In my opinion, I like the ones we’re making better than the originals, but that’s because I love dark chocolate.

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Hope to see you soon.