We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend, I know we did. Our friends Ron & Rhonda drove over from Placencia to spend the holiday weekend with us. Pretty much your typical Thanksgiving weekend with friends, lots of food, drinks, football, beer pong, rain and even a porcupine in the tree by the garage.

As long as I can remember, we’ve always had a turkey on Thanksgiving, but this year we thought we’d change it up a little. We have tried the turkeys down here, and for the price they’re just not that great. So this year we decided to smoke a beef brisket and have some friends over. The brisket was cooked low and slow in the smoker for 22 hours over some hickory and cherry wood. After that it was wrapped and rested in an ice chest for another 5 hours before being served, and it turned out moist and tender.

There were 11 of us and everyone brought a delicious side dish to share. Besides the brisket, there was smoked turkey breast with gravy, mac ‘n cheese, roasted veggies, stuffing, creamed chia, potato casserole, bread, an orzo salad, sugar-coated cranberries, brownies and a Jamaican lime pie with a chocolate drizzle. It wasn’t a so-called traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but a feast is a feast.

We did actually have a whole turkey on Thanksgiving. Every year around this time, our friends at the French Croissant Bakery in San Pedro bake up loaves of bread in the shape of a turkey. Since we were heading to the island for a couple of days, we reserved one to bring back. Edd and Runi at the bakery make the best breads and cookies anywhere, and their buttery croissants are to die for. On the plane ride back from the island, we had a big box with the turkey bread, a bunch of croissants and a couple dozen cookies. If you are ever in San Pedro make sure to stop in the bakery and say hi, it’s right across from the air terminal.

Living in the Southwest for so long, you know that green chiles have become one of our favorite food groups. Well, down here in Belize green chiles are hard to come by. Earlier this year, we ordered some chile seeds from Hatch, New Mexico. Ruben planted around 600 plants on our farm lot that were just for his and our personal use. We just did our first picking of them the other day and there are still plenty left on the plants waiting to get bigger.

Since we have all these green chiles and fresh tomatoes, we thought we’d make up some pico de gallo and some ranchero sauce. So Kelley cut some green chiles, tomatoes, onions, jalapeños, garlic and limes, then into the smoker they went for a couple of hours. The pico and ranchero sauce went perfectly on chips and as a topper for the rellenos.

On the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, we fired up the grill, turned on some football, grabbed a few cold beers and started roasting chiles, not a bad way to spend a Sunday. The smell was heavenly, and it reminded us of the big chile roasters that we would see in front of stores back in Arizona during chile season. Wouldn’t it be great if someone made a Hatch Green Chile scented candle to burn in your home when fresh chiles aren’t available? Anyway, the first thing Kelley made was some proper chile rellenos, like we used to get back in Arizona. Of course we will also be making some bowls of green chile, green chile smothered burritos, quesadillas with green chiles, green chile bacon cheeseburgers and just about anything else you can imagine with the green chiles. This is a rare treat for us and we are going to enjoy every last one of them.

This week’s garden offerings were cacao and grapefruit. There were also a few habaneros and a little bit of kale. At this point we’ve decided not to plant any more vegetables and just concentrate on all the different fruit trees. Ruben always has a few different veggies growing on our farm lot that we are always welcome to. Besides that, they have opened a great produce stand in our village that usually has everything we need. Our vegetable garden was just taking up too much of our time with all the constant maintenance it needed. Now with that extra space, we will be able to put in another lemon tree and a cinnamon tree, which we already have growing in pots.

It had been a couple of weeks since our first picking of green chiles and it was time to do it again. We picked another two buckets of the bigger ones. Hopefully, we will have 2-3 more pickings before the plants start to die out. After we roast them, they are getting bagged and frozen, and that should keep us in chiles throughout the year until the next crop goes in.

The nights have been getting chilly down here (don’t laugh, 65° is really cool for us). Anyway it seemed like a perfect time to make up some lobster chowder and invite the neighbors over. We invited John, Penny, Rick, and Amanda over for a few drinks and some warm chowder. Amanda has been making some good sourdough bread lately, so she brought over a loaf to go along with the chowder. It was a nice warm comforting meal on a cool evening. I used to always make clam chowder, but clams are simply not available down here, unless we order them on Amazon. Although there is plenty of lobster available, so why not.

Since the nights are a little cool it was the perfect time to sit on the porch around the fire pit and have some hot chocolate. The peppermint schnapps that we made was ready and just waiting to go into some hot chocolate. Kelley and I sit around enjoying the cool evenings while they last, because the days are still up around 85°.

It’s hard to believe that this year is almost over and the cold weather and snow are starting to set in up north. We hope everyone stays warm the next few months, I know we will.