Passionfruit (Maracuyá)

Passiflora edulis – Passionfruit vine

That is my passionfruit vine. Here's another photo of it growing around a banana plant.

Click any of the photos to view larger

Here the vine is continuing its journey over some other plants.

And here climbing over my macadamia nut tree.

Here is another vine climbing up to the top of my crepe myrtle tree.

And here it is reaching for the roof on top of my variegated hibiscus. When it takes hold, it does not want to let go!

Click to read more >>

Honduran Blueberry-Lemon Cake

Lemon cake with Honduran blueberries

Ah, we need a break from all that seriousness, don't we?

Doesn't that cake look yummy? Before I came to Honduras, blueberries were my favorite fruit. Now I would have to say that mangoes are on top with blueberries being a close second. Imagine how happy I was to find that blueberries are grown in Honduras! Then imagine how sad I was to find that most of the crop is exported.

You can occasionally find blueberries in La Ceiba, where they are incredibly cheap compared to US blueberry prices, but a little more expensive compared to tropical fruits. However, blueberries aren't well known here so sometimes the store's supply isn't as fresh as it should be.

Lucky me, I have a connection so I get some nice fresh Honduran blueberries every once in awhile. I hoard them away in the freezer and dole them out like they are made of gold. Honduran blueberries are similar (or the same?) as the rabbit-eye blueberries grown in Texas: big and juicy. Combine those berries with some big, fat, juicy Honduran limes or lemons, if you prefer, in a sweet, moist cake and you have blueberry-lemon heaven.

I felt like baking a cake not long ago. I started searching my cookbooks for a lemon cake recipe (one of El Jefe's favorites). Then I remembered my blueberry stash in the freezer and a Lemon-Blueberry cake recipe I had made long ago. It was a lower fat-lower calorie cake recipe.

I started making it, when it occurred to me: Is my Catracho going to be satisfied with a low-fat, low-sugar cake? I don't think so! In fact, after he saw the cake later, his happy face turned downtrodden when I started telling him that I had a recipe from a low-fat cookbook. Then I went on to explain that I modified the recipe to fatten it up, which cheered him up considerably. Yes, that is shameful, but if you are going to eat dessert, it might as well be the real thing.

Here is my recipe. I hope you enjoy it:

La Gringa's Honduran Blueberry-Lemon Cake

3 1/2 cups sifted flour
2 tsps. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
-------
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 cup mantequilla blanca (or sour cream)
1 tsp. vanilla
-------
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter, softened (1 stick)
-------
3 tbsp. lemon zest, divided use (~4 medium lemons)
1 1/2 - 2 cups cups fresh or frozen Honduran blueberries
1-2 tbsp. sifted flour

Glaze
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
3-4 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp. of lemon zest from above

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour a 10-cup bundt pan or, I'm guessing, two loaf pans or maybe 1 1/2 to 2 dozen cupcakes. This cake rose quite a bit so whatever you use, don't fill it more than about 2/3 full.

Combine 3 1/2 cups of flour with baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Combine milk and 1/2 cup lemon juice and let sit for about 5 minutes until it thickens. Add mantequilla and vanilla and whisk to combine. If using sour cream instead of mantequilla, I think I'd add an extra 1/4 cup of milk. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat sugar and eggs about 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Add softened butter and beat another 2 minutes. To the sugar mixture, alternate adding about 1/3 of the milk mixture with 1/3 of the flour mixture at a time, beating on low speed with each addition until blended. The batter will be thick.

Place blueberries in a colander, rinse if necessary. No need to thaw them if frozen. (It's preferable not to thaw because the juice then sometimes turns your batter grey). Shake off excess water and sprinkle berries with 1-2 tbsp. sifted flour. Toss the berries in the colander to lightly coat them with flour. Gently fold the berries and 2 tbsp. lemon zest into the batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared bundt pan and bake for 50-55 minutes until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, invert the cake onto a wire rack to finish cooling. While still a bit warm, but not hot, pour the glaze over the cake. For loaf pans, I'd check the doneness of the cakes at about 40-45 minutes and for cupcakes, at about 20-25 minutes.

Glaze

Sift the powered sugar into a small bowl. Add 2-3 tablespoons or so of lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of lemon zest. Stir well. Add more juice until the glaze is the consistency you like. (Truth is I forgot to measure the juice.) Drizzle over slightly warm cake.

Enjoy!

If you try this recipe, please let me know how you like it. By the way, I call this Honduran blueberry cake not because it is a Honduran recipe but because it has Honduran blueberries – just to be clear. Of course, it would work with any type of blueberries.

Blueberry tip: Don't wash blueberries before freezing. Spread on a cookie sheet to freeze and then place into a plastic freezer bag. They will freeze separately better that way allowing you to measure out what you need, but more importantly, the skin tends to become tough if you freeze them after washing them.

Lotsa lemons!

Lots and lots of lemons/limes

Remember when I showed you my first lemon harvest in 2009? Go ahead and take a look. I'll wait.

Things are definitely looking up now. This particular day's batch includes some smaller lemons (limes?) because El Jefe had to cut off some of the lower branches of one tree which were so heavy with fruit that they were hanging on the ground and killing the grass. We generally get big fat lemons/limes.

We've only had to buy lemons a couple of times in the past many months and wow! Ours are so much juicier. I don't know how long the season continues but I hope it is a long time. For some reason, I haven't kept track of when the trees are producing. I really should do that. This photo is of the fruit blossoms. They smell so good!

My odd – and possibly annoying – habit of not specifying lemons or limes is because here in Honduras, they are all called limones (lemons) and a lima is something you sharpen your machete with. Obviously the yellow ones at the top with the pointy ends are lemons. Those come from a deadly thorny tree that will rip your skin open if you aren't careful. My sister-in-law gave us a start from her tree. The odd thing is that her lemons are very small and round (called indios) and ours our big and pointy, the shape we typically think of for a lemon. These are so acidic that I can't use more than one slice a day in my tea or my teeth start hurting. They are also chock full of seeds so based on all those clues, I think they may be límon agria. The others (the round green ones) are much tastier, less acidic, and have no seeds or thorns. They appear to be limes, and if you pinned me down, I would say they are limes. But before you jump to any conclusions, read Lemons or Limes?. It's definitely not as clear cut as you might think if you are North American where your lemons are always yellow and your limes are always green.

I was trying to make an artful arrangement for the photo, but they kept rolling out of the bowl. The ones on the table are the ones that I had to keep picking up off the floor after they rolled out of the bowl.

One radish can feed a family

Honduran radishes

I saw these veggies at the grocery store. I thought they were radishes but they were just so big that I had to ask an employee. Sure enough: radishes. I put that normal sized banana on the display to give you an idea of the size.

Have you ever seen radishes this big? What do you do with them? I've never seen them used by anyone I know or served in restaurants, but some people must use them or they wouldn't sell them.

The small common red radishes that we are used to in the US, get very woody if you let them grow too big but maybe these are meant to be that way. Darn! I forgot to weigh one of them. Look below. You can even buy half a radish!

Rambután

Rambután

Rambután (Nephelium lappaceum) is a tropical fruit common to the north coast area of Honduras. According to my CURLA Fruits of the Humid Tropics book, it was first introduced to Honduras at the Lancetilla Botanical Garden from Malaysia in 1926. The fruits may be red or yellow. The tree can be grown from sea level to 700 meters altitude in areas which receive at least 2 meters of rain annually.

I've had rambután many times, and yeah, it tastes good, a little grape-like with a tropical perfume, sweeter and not as acidic as most grapes, but it is a lot of work for the amount of 'meat'. The egg-shaped fruit easily separates from the peel when you split open the covering around the equator. Then you simply plop the fruit into your mouth.

Unfortunately, the thin layer of fruit generally does not separate from the seed so easily. With a little chewing and sucking, you get a tiny bit of pulp but mostly juice. Often they are eaten around the kitchen table or outside with a large bowl or communal bucket in which to toss the peels and seeds.

These rambutáns, however, were like nothing I've ever had before!

They are from a variety developed by Fundación Hondureña de Investigación Agrícola (FHIA - Honduras Foundation for Agricultural Investigation), the organization known world-wide for its banana development. In addition to bananas and plantains, FHIA has been instrumental in introducing, developing, and/or promoting non-traditional exportable crops for Honduras, such as rambután, cacao, sweet corn, mango, ginger, black pepper, and others. When I asked Dr. Adolfo Martínez, Director General of FHIA, why I had never had this variety before, he explained that this fruit is grown for exportation. Not fair!

These exotic rambutáns had about a half inch or more of sweet translucent fruit around the seed. But the best part is that the fruit cleanly and easily separated from the seed. Wikipedia calls this a "freestone" type. The trees of this and other equally good varieties are available at Centro Experimental y Demostrativo de Cacao (CEDEC - Experimental and Demonstrative Center of Cacao) in La Masica for L.110 (about US $5.80). According to CURLA, grafted trees can begin producing fruit in as little as 2-4 years.

According to Wikipedia, the name rambután is derived from the Indonesian word rambutan, meaning "hairy". The silly looking bad-hair-day fruit doesn't really feel hairy — the spikes feel more like little plastic appendages. In Honduras, they may also be called licha (though they are not lychees) and peluda (hairy). A common name in Costa Rica is mamón chino (Chinese sucker).

The fruit is similar to the lychee (Litchi chinensis) which you may be more familiar with, but the lychee fruit isn't covered with the "hairs".

So if you ever see this odd little fruit in your local grocery store, buy it! It gets the La Gringa stamp of approval.

Sorry for the quality of the photos. The light wasn't great for photo taking and when I went to go take some new photos during the daylight, all of the rambután were gone!

Lemon harvest

Our lemon tree is finally producing a pretty good crop of lemons. These are really tasty and so much juicier than the lemons in the stores. Yum.

Pitaya roja (Hylocereus undatus)

Pitaya roja (Hylocereus undatus)

I'm on a roll here with the blog articles, like the good old days. ;-)

I have a backload of literally thousands of photos. Looking through them the other day, I realized that part of what has been holding me back is feeling like I need to know the official names and must be able to tell you everything about the plant or thing or place. I'm going to try to put that aside and let you readers tell me more if I don't know.

In this case, however, I was able to find this fruit in my book, Frutales y Condimentarias del Trópico Húmedo (Fruits and Condiments of the Humid Tropics) from CURLA, the agricultural university here in La Ceiba. Neither El Jefe nor Arexy were any help at all. It turns out that this is a cactus fruit! This photo of the night blooming cactus (Hylocereus undatus) is from Wikipedia. It is native to Mexico and Central America.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you are interested in growing fruit trees or other fruit plants in the north coast of Honduras, I highly recommend this book (in Spanish only). One review calls it a "A bible for any tropical fruit enthusiast".It can be purchased for around $20 at CURLA, and while you are there, you can buy several types of small fruit trees and a few other plants for around L. 20 each (about US $1). I haven't been there in quite awhile but we were able to get some good info as well as a tour of their trial orchard in which we were able to get a better idea of what the full grown trees would be like.

For each of the 150 or so fruits covered, the book has a page of photos of the plant, blossom, fruit, and full grown tree and another page (sometimes two) of information, including the scientific and common names, the origin of the plant, description, preferred climate and soil type, propagation, planting and management, recommended varieties, age and length of time for production, the season and quantity of harvest, and the insect and disease problems that may occur. My only quarrel with the book is it's organization. Even the index is not in alphabetical order, making it very difficult to look anything up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So beautiful it's hard to believe the color is natural!

Anyway, back to the pitaya roja. El Jefe bought it at the market at the recommendation of the vendor, who said it made a delicious juice and that one fruit would make a large quantity of juice. Neither J nor Arexy had ever had it before. The book says that it is not cultivated in Honduras, but that the fruits are sometimes gathered and sold from the forests. The fruit can be scooped and eaten from a spoon, seeds and all.

Some of the common names for the fruit are Pitahaya (Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico), Flor de Cáliz (Puerto Rico), and Reina de la Noche (also Mexico). In English, I found that it is sometimes called Dragon Fruit or Strawberry Pear. A white-fruited variety may be more common, and Fruits of Warm Climates indicates that this red variety is actually H. ocamponis Britt. & Rose.

Upon cutting it open, we were surprised to see the almost beet-like interior — beet-like in the finger staining aspects as well. The fruit was much softer than I expected and full of small black seeds. Arexy mashed and strained the pulp through a sieve to remove the seeds, and then used the blender. She added a little sugar and water. She made almost a half-gallon pitcher of juice from this one fruit.

We thought the flavor tasted a little bland even before we made the juice, but that may have been because we kept it around for a few days before we made the juice or maybe Arexy added too much water based on the vendor's claim. But the vibrant color made up for the flavor! What a beautiful drink. We found the flavor was improved with the addition of a little lemon juice.

Would I try it again? Definitely. But only if it is available in the market; I won't be growing any spiny cactus here.

References if you are interested in learning more about the Pitaya:

National Tropical Botanical Garden
Fruits of Warm Climates
University of Hawaii Cooperative Extension Service

"Baseball" avocados

I call this a baseball avocado

We did the unthinkable, the unpardonable, the very stupid thing of planting seeds from hybrid fruits and this is what we get. Perfectly round, baseball sized avocados. After waiting about 5 years, we now have two huge baseball avocado trees.

I know better, I really do. It's just that these seeds were growing so nicely in the compost pile and since they had such a strong desire to live, I couldn't help myself but to plant them.

Someone picked a couple of them when they were rock hard. I waited and waited, then sort of forgot and the next time I checked, the last one had already gone bad. El Jefe told me later that he had opened the other one and the bit of it that wasn't already bad actually tasted pretty good, like a Haas avocado. So maybe all is not lost.

Full confession: We also planted two avocado seeds from those long handled avocados that tasted so good. I don't know if they are hybrids or not. We'll see what happens.

Some people never learn.

Green oranges

Green oranges

A friend who raises oranges gave El Jefe a 'few'. What might not be clear by this photo is that this container holds close to 5 gallons. And that wasn't all of them. Arexy had already made about a half-gallon of juice and had prepared the oranges in the container below for 'sucking'.

This is the typical Honduran way of consuming oranges. They are peeled and then cut in half to hold in the hand to suck the juice out of them. Oranges are peeled so that the bitter skin doesn't leave a bad taste on the lips. When you buy one on the street, the vendor will peel it for you.

We gave a huge bag of oranges to Arexy and another one to my sister-in-law, and still had oranges for about two weeks.

Though they are green, not like you would see in US grocery stores, these oranges are bright orange inside, ripe, sweet, and juicy. Very sweet and juicy!

To understand why your oranges are orange and ours are green, please see Why are oranges orange?

Carao

Carao fruit

El Jefe found this woody 2-foot long "bean" which he said is called carao (pronounced ca-rah-oh). He said when he was little, they used to suck the jam-like fruit from the little sections containing seeds. The bean comes from a large pink-flowering tree called Cassia grandis. The tree is common from southern Mexico to northern South America.

"It smells a little funny," he said, so I took a whiff. Yeah, "funny" like sweaty sneakers smell funny. However, I have heard of other tropical fruits, like the durian, which are said to smell absolutely terrible but taste wonderful. That is hard for me to imagine, but I was game so I tasted the goo around the seeds.

I tried really hard to think about how I could describe the flavor and I just don't know. I could almost fool myself into thinking there was a chocolate flavor, but mixed with something a bit tangy, maybe like chocolate and cherries mashed together.

Apparently carao is most popularly used in a drink made with milk. I found a nice story about a small businesswoman who bottles the syrup in Costa Rica, amusingly titled "Don't let the smell fool you". Yes, I could see that diluted with milk it would probably taste pretty good. I'd have to use the machete to get all those little sections open and I don't think my aim is good enough for that.

This particular bean may be past its prime. Trying to get a better photo of the inside, I broke a piece off, but that end was white and dry inside. I couldn't break the remaining piece at all until I put one end on the floor and put my foot on it to break it, it was that hard!

But then I somehow managed to take 4 blurry photos so you can't really see the inside anyway. Above you can see the brown goo on my finger. In the photo at the left, I have folded back one woody section to expose another seed and more gooey fruit. For a better look at the inside, see these photos.

I couldn't find much information on the internet and almost all of it is in Spanish. Apparently, it is known as a blood builder and is used to treat anemia. I wonder if this could be useful for treating dengue hemorrágico patients. Other (unproven) health claims are that it increases energy, increases milk in nursing mothers, prevents hemorrhages, and is an aphrodisiac.

Guavas are for the birds

Brown Jay chomping down on La Gringa's guava

At least my guavas are for the birds, the fruit fly larvae, and the chickens. I've only had two fruits in the past year. :-/

I walked into the kitchen yesterday and something bright pink outside the window caught my eye. I looked up and my first thought was, "Why am I seeing the inside of the guava instead of the outside?" Then I saw the bird. This is one of many brown jays (thanks to Daniel of Hondubirding for identifying it for me), toucans, squirrels, and other birds that avail themselves of our guavas.

I'm happy to feed the wildlife. I just wish they would finish what they start. Those half-eaten guavas laying on the ground really stink!

I'll leave this tree for the animals. I don't think I can win the fruit fly battle. My neighbor, who was the one who gave me the tree, used to bag his developing fruit to keep out the fruit flies. I'm not sure if he still does that now that his tree must be huge.

For those who don't know, we don't use chemicals in our garden. Under my philosophy, generally I would just get rid of this tree as being unsuitable for an organic garden in this area, but since it is such a boon to the wildlife, I guess we'll keep it.

Here is a video of the greedy brown jay filling himself with guava.




Enjoy! That guava looks mighty tasty.

Lemon harvest 2009

La Gringa's lemon

That is lemon, singular. The above photo is of my first spring harvest, March 28 − one lemon!

It looked perfect but I was hiding the part where it split open. Hahaha. I'm thinking that maybe a deluge of rain caused it to expand too fast, but I don't know. It was really delicious anyway and very juicy. But it didn't make too much of a dent in our lemon purchasing needs since we use about a dozen a week, mostly for ice tea.

I need to do some reading about lemon trees but I've had no time for anything for the past few months. I have no idea how long it should take for the lemons to get ripe or how you can tell whether they are ripe or not.

Does anyone know what these nasty things are? We discovered them devouring the lemon leaves about 6 weeks before the first harvest. There were so many and they had done such damage that I just cut off the ends of the branches where they were and drowned them in a bucket of water.

This poor tree has been through a lot. First, right after it was planted, some other flowering plants grew up around it. I wanted to leave those plants for awhile and eventually I forgot the lemon tree (about 18 inches tall - 46 cm.) was there, so it grew sideways trying to find some sun.

Then a worker trimmed it for us in the most god-awful way, cutting off the main trunk about 12 inches from the ground (30 cm.). You can see in this photo that the branches are growing about a foot above the grass. Then because it was growing sideways with branches on only one side, the rootstock (probably sour orange) began to grow from the trunk. Luckily I noticed that part of the tree was completely different. It grew stiff and straight up with thick leaves and heavy thorns, so I cut all that off.

This is a photo of my winter harvest, December 10 − again, one lemon! Oh, well, there are four or five small ones still on the tree. I guess that isn't too bad for a young, badly neglected and deformed tree. It is barely five feet tall and scrawny.

I'm hoping that as the tree grows, we can do something about the shape, although I'm not sure how.

So these are my two lemon harvests, not because of what I've done, but despite what I have and haven't done.

Buy Honduran Vegetables

Honduran avocados

The other day El Jefe stopped at his favorite vegetable stand to buy avocados. He asked for the Mexican (Hass) avocados that we usually buy. The vendor said, "No! Buy Honduran!"

El Jefe thought for a split second and said, "You're right. We need to support our own farmers." The vendor said, "Yes, we aren't going to buy those Mexican ones anymore."

So El Jefe bought these strange looking elongated avocados (about 10 inches long, 25 cm.). Most of the Honduran avocados that I've seen are the huge oval avocados with a large seed. The fruit is usually more bright yellow than green and has a slightly sweeter taste.

See Holy Mole! Guacamole! for a photo which shows the size and color of common Honduran avocados compared to Hass, and my most excellent guacamole recipe. (Yes, I used to have a life before June 28.)

I wasn't sure what to expect with these, but when I cut the first one open, it was absolutely beautiful. Perfect creamy texture. Not a blemish.

The taste was virtually like Haas but the bonus was that one avocado yielded as much as two of the small Mexican varieties for only L.2 more (L.10 vs. 8, or US $ .53 vs $ .42). This big plateful of slices sprinkled with lemon juice and salt is the fruit from just one of the avocados.

Yum. I'm sold on these! In fact, I planted the seeds. We'll see what happens.

If you live here in Honduras, look for Honduran veggies at the markets. I've mentioned in the past that a lot of the vegetables and fruits in the grocery stores (at least here in La Ceiba) are (or were) imported from Guatemala. Let's do what we can to help local Honduran producers.

I don't know if these particular avocados are exported, but I do know that a lot of Honduran veggies are exported to the US and I believe that Walmart groceries stores import a lot of Honduran produce. You can help Honduras by looking for that Honduras veggie sticker. You might even ask your grocer to stock more Honduran produce.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Honduran bananas, pineapples, coffee, shrimp and tilapia are some of the common products exported to the US. Even though bananas and pineapples primarily come from big companies like Dole and Chiquita, they provide a lot of jobs in Honduras.

I'm sure that many Hondurans in the US miss some of their favorite Honduran food products. Here are a few sites which sell Honduran food and coffee products:

Food and other Honduran products:
The First Honduran Online Mall
Planeta Catracho
Catracholandia (in Spanish)

Coffee only:
Café Honduras (Welchez coffee)
Café Copán
Honduras Coffee Company
Brew Organic (be sure to select Honduras)


Thanks to Suzanne for finding most of these links.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you can help me out with more suggestions that I can give to readers about Honduran products and where they might find them, please let me know. I will be doing another article about other types of Honduran products sold in the US.

The Honduran economy is really hurting right now − more from the after effects of US economic crisis than the current political crisis, except in the areas of tourism and voluntourism, which are suffering tremendously from the unwarranted, politically motivated US travel advisory.

Tourism provides a lot of jobs in Honduras. So one of the best and most fun ways that you can help Honduras is to come to visit, whether it is as a tourist or a volunteer. Spend your tourist dollar in Honduras! Many of the hotels have great deals right now. (More on that later, too.)

Breathe

A neighbor brought me these mangoes.

Pretty, huh?

He told me not to worry, that Honduras isn't going to have a war.

He says things are going to be different now
and the next corrupto is going to think twice.

Big mangos, little pineapple

These are the biggest mangoes I've ever seen in my life − and the smallest pineapple. The pineapple, though it looked nice and yellow when we cut it, was pretty tasteless.

I wasn't expecting much from these mangoes. Fruit that is super big just usually seems as if it has outgrown its flavor as well. Oh. My. God. These were the best mangoes I've ever tasted. Super sweet, tangy, juicy, perfumy aroma, nice texture, not stringy. I'm planting those seeds to see what happens.


This one weighed 1.4 kilos! That's a little over 3 pounds. We're going to have to go check to see if they have more. Yum yum yum.

Processing the coconut meat

Nice thick layer of coconut meat!

After opening the coconuts and eating our fill coconut meat right out of the shell, we were left with six coconuts. El Jefe stuck the cleaned coconuts in the fridge. Not wanting to chance the cocos going bad before I got to them, I decided to shred and freeze the meat right away.

Oops. This is the coco that El Jefe opened and he, unlike Carlos, left the hard outer shell on it. No way was the veggie peeler going to handle that. What to do, what to do? I got out my trusty rock and smashed it down on the coco. Absolutely nothing happened.

El Jefe said, "Wrong, wrong, wrong." He demonstrated that you smash the coconut into the rock mid-air, not vice versa. He got it open, but it was still a lot more work to get the meat out of the shell than with Carlos' method.

I'm completely coconut-ignorant. Growing up thinking that coconut comes already dried, shredded, and pre-sweetened in a handy plastic bag, what can I say? It's my deprived upbringing.

The last time I shredded coconut, I just chopped up the meat in the Cusinart food processor. While that was okay, I realized that the texture was much nicer on the coconut meat that El Jefe shredded by hand.

Being too 'technically advanced' ;-) (translation: 'lazy') to shred it by hand, I tried using the medium shredding blade on the Cuisinart on the first coconut. It processed the meat in no time, but the shreds were a little too large, so I ended up chopping them a bit more with a knife.

Then I tried the small shredding blade. Just right. I shredded five coconuts in less than two minutes. (El Jefe was impressed!) The coconut meat was nice and thick and the six cocos gave me 9 cups of shredded coconut.

The whole time I was thinking about all the things I want to make with coconut. I want to try making some coconut oil, which is said to be a health wonder, but apparently it takes about 10 coconuts to make a cup of oil. Right now, I just feel too coconut-stingy to use that many cocos for oil.

I also want to make coconut milk for soup. Lots of seafood soups, and tapado (a meat stew) are made with fresh coconut milk as a base for the broth here on the north coast of Honduras. Yum. But here again, you are basically extracting the liquid (with a lot of work) and throwing away the coconut meat later − or feeding it to animals. I just don't feel coconut-rich enough for that yet.

I toasted two cups with a little sugar so that if and when cream* ever becomes available again in La Ceiba :-{ , I'll be all ready to make my toasted coconut ice cream again (which, by the way, got rave reviews from Jonna).

All the recipes that I've seen on toasting coconut call for toasting the shreds in the oven for 10-15 minutes. That MUST be for dried packaged coconut as it took almost 40 minutes (at 350° F) for the coco to change color. The moisture content of fresh coconut (60-70%) makes a big difference. Also, the oven loses heat each time that I (frequently) took the pan out to stir and turn the shreds to prevent scorching on the bottom. It turned out much prettier than last time, eh?

Funny, but El Jefe was pooh-poohing the toasting effort the whole time. "I don't know why you bother." "It's going to take hours." "What is that supposed to do anyway." "Blah, blah, blah." However, when he later found the toasted coconut cooling in the fridge and grabbed some to taste, he said, "Man! I could eat this whole containerful right now." Nah-nah-nananah. I told you so.

Still on my to-do list: Making coconut milk, coconut oil, macaroons, coconut shrimp, tapado, sopa de caracol, and a coconut cream pie. Since we are planning on harvesting more this weekend, I had better get on the ball with some of this cooking.


*Finally found cream again since I wrote this! I originally used to look for it in the dairy case and of course it was never there. Then I found the tetrapacks of UHT cream in another area of the store. When the tetrapacks of cream disappeared, I finally found Nestle's canned cream. When that disappeared, I was lost. Who was to know that that Anchor cream in tetrapacks was now available in the dairy case? I quit looking there years ago. They are always one step ahead of me.