We are very excited to be able to start making speciality meats that are not available here in Belize. Such as hard dry Italian salami, pepperoni, prosciutto, capicola, aged cheeses and dry-aged beef. We recently invested in a dry cure fridge that controls the temp, humidity and can handle up to 230 lbs of meat at a time. Once we get this thing figured out and come up with some good recipes, we’ll be making all kinds of salamis and other good stuff that you just can’t find down here. It’s quite a process of exact temps and humidity, weighing the meats every week until a certain amount of moisture is lost, plus controlling the molds for a month or two, but we are up for that challenge. Hopefully it will all be worth it, just to have a good dry Italian salami, some prosciutto or an aged prime rib roast.
Speaking of meats, we finally got some decent sized pork bellies from our butcher. He knows that we like the bigger, fatter bellies for our bacon and will usually call us when he gets some in. It’s been 4-5 months since he’s gotten any larger pigs in that would make good bacon. So currently we’ve got 20 lbs of belly that just came out of the cure and is now in the smoker. I think we keep this batch of bacon for ourselves, because we have been craving bacon green chile, cheeseburgers.
Currently on our farm lot, Ruben has corn, green beans, tomatoes and squash that are ready. Plus, he has his next round of tomatoes in that will be ready in another month or so. I don’t know what else he plans on planting, but I know that there’ll be some more green chiles in the future. It’s nice to be able to just wander up the road and pick fresh veggies as needed.
Now that we have made our cacao vinegar, we were looking for something unique to do with it. I saw a recipe for pickled green (unripe) mangos that was said to be delicious. The recipe called for apple cider vinegar, so we substituted that with our cacao vinegar and also added some Tajín seasoning. We really had no idea what to expect, but it was surprisingly good. It was a little tart from the vinegar, yet sweet from the mango, and the Tajín added a nice touch. We’re not sure if we should just eat them out of the jar or use them in a recipe of some type. Maybe on a light summer salad they might be good. We think they would be worth making again, once we figure out the best way to eat them.
We didn’t think our vanilla was going to bloom this year because it usually blooms in February or March, but the weather has been so mild, that it took them some extra time. We said before that we were not going to bother with the vanilla because we have to hand-pollinate each flower in order to get a vanilla bean to form. Since the flowers are only open for a few hours, it’s all about the timing. Plus when the flower does get pollinated and forms a bean, it will be on the plant for about 9 months until it’s ready to pick, and then another 3-6 months to cure. But you know us, we can’t let anything go, so every morning, Kelley is out on vanilla watch looking to pollinate the flowers when they open. If we do get any vanilla, it will probably be used in some of our chocolates next year.
Usually our chocolate making goes pretty well. More often than not we can’t get the chocolate to temper correctly, but that’s usually the only problem. This time we had something a little different happen. The chocolate came out of the grinder after 24 hours and was silky smooth, then poured onto baking sheets to cool. As it cooled and hardened, it didn’t bloom correctly and we ended up with a very interesting looking piece of chocolate. There is nothing wrong with it, it just needs to be heated back up and a little more cacao butter added to help it bloom correctly. The next day Kelley reheated it and added some more cacao butter and all was good.
With the on and off rains we’ve had and the mild temps (60°s-90°s) for the past few months, our plants are loving it. A lot of our plants have flowers on them year-round, but our Amaryllis only blooms once a year. The Amaryllis are in full bloom currently, and considering it only blooms once a year and the flowers only last a few weeks, we always look forward to seeing them.
Also currently blooming is one of our orchids that we found on the property and relocated near the house. This one is called the Dancing Lady Orchid, because its flowers resemble a small dancer with a colorful skirt. As you can see, they get quite a few long blooms of small yellow flowers. Belize is home to over 300 species of native orchids. We have quite a few around here, but not anything close to that, but we’ll keep looking.
The Blue Buntings are back. We only see these birds at a certain time of year around our place. This week, there is a big flock of them hanging around our farm lot. The Blue Buntings are migratory birds that will travel from southern Canada to northern South America. One unique thing about them is that they migrate at night and navigate by using the stars. Every year they seem to stop by this area, but we don’t know if they are coming or going.
Something had been making off with some of our custard apples from the tree. Every time some fruit is getting ripe, critters such as Agoutis, Coatimundis or birds will start nibbling at or taking the whole fruit. Usually, they make off with 10-25% of them, depending on what it is and how accessible it is. Which is fine with us, that’s why we plant extra, but we’re always curious to see who’s been taking them.
So we put a trail camera on the tree next to the custard apple to see if we could spot who the culprit was. It turns out it wasn’t one of the usual suspects. It was a good sized Tayra (bush dog) that was climbing the tree and stealing them. The camera would catch him every couple of days, climbing the tree and getting away with one. We love that we are attracting animals around here, besides that just look how happy he looks strutting away with that custard apple. Tayras are a member of the weasel family and classified as a carnivore, but obviously he likes a little fruit in his diet too.
It must be Tayra season around here, as we just saw another one. The other morning I was having my coffee and heard all this ruckus on a palm tree just three feet out the window. Kelley grabbed her camera and spotted another Tayra up in the trees. This one was quite a bit smaller than the one who has been stealing our custard apples. Hopefully there’s a whole family of them around here, as one of their favorite foods is the spiny rat. Not that we have a rat problem, but we have seen a few over the years, so hopefully they’re keeping the rat population down.
We are still working hard on our new garden paths. Last weekend we ended up cutting down another 8-9 trees to be used for the borders along the trails. Now that all the borders are in and the water line is hooked up we can really start figuring out where we want all the other plants to go.
That’s about what’s happening around here this time. Can’t wait to see what next week holds, it’s always something interesting.