Category Archives: food plants

Snapshots of Life Right Now: September 2015

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Well, tomorrow is officially our 2 year anniversary of living in Puerto Rico (here’s life when we first arrived)! My how time flies! We still have so much to look forward to (or it could be seen as so much to do!) that time just sort of slips away from us. Perhaps it is the lack of snow and cold that makes everything sort of meld together, or maybe it is that we don’t have any real pressing urgency to be anywhere, but time has gone by so fast.

Turkey troop
Turkey troop in the sunlight

They say a picture is worth a 1000 words, so rather than attempt to write about our daily lives too much I thought I would just share many thousands of words in a few pictures. Thank goodness for pictures to capture a few of these fleeting moments.

Mowing the lawn
Summer rains and heat means things grow super fast -so we both get out and mow!

Bridge quebrada
Preparing the site for the bridge crossing over the quebrada

Troupial 1
Beautiful troupial in a tamarind tree

Britton bench
Britton, Kitty and the turkey poults 

Cow at steps
Friendly soft-eyed cow at Steps Beach

Pulasan
Strange yummy fruit finds at the Farmer’s Market – A porcupine looking pulasan

Plumeria trinitaria
Plumeria and trinitaria (plus sphinx moth caterpillars)

Ship passingWatching ships passing and clouds building

Steps beachJamming at Marks
Days of sun and beach and nights of jamming music

Cassie chicken cat
And lots of time outside with the animals: Me, Kitty and a chicken

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Bounty of the Finca and Food for the Soul

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Fruit salad
We have been making lots of fruit salads (like this 100% home-grown one)!

Though we can grow food year-round here in Puerto Rico, summer definitely gives us an extra boost in abundance. Here in Rincón it is mango season and avocado season is just around the corner, but those two main crops are not the only things! At our little finca we are harvesting so many bananas, quenepas and passionfruit we just can’t keep up with eating them all!

Bounty of the finca 1
A bounty filled with eggs, bananas, quenepas, passionfruit, mangoes, and sapodilla

We had thought about bringing some to the farmer’s market since we couldn’t eat them all, but we never did. So we decided to go around and drop some fruit off with friends and neighbors. People were so grateful it was incredible! It is amazing how sharing your abundance creates a reciprocal reaction. Our neighbors gave us mustard greens and avocados or said they would bring down plantains later, other friends offered starfruit, the mail people were super excited about the fruit, especially the passionfruit.

One of our friends wrote a beautiful post about being thankful for a meal composed of friends’ gifted food. We randomly gave a guy on a bench a bunch of bananas and he blessed us in Spanish! And our other friends gave us some fruit they had dehydrated and took us around their neighborhood where some empty lots filled with huge ripe mangos and avocados were just dripping off the trees! These are not just regular mangos and avocados but rather varieties I have never seen in my life. Awesome things!

Mango bounty
Just a little of the abundance in return from friends

Massive mango and common
Humongous mango on the left and our little “common” mango on the right

We had so much fun just getting out and handing out a smile and some fruit that the returns we received far exceeded what we gave. It’s a great reminder that giving IS receiving! We are so thankful for the food we can grow and the people and animals we can feed with the food. And when you share your abundance it becomes “soul food”; it nourishes the soul as well as the body! What’s even more cool in this simple cycle of giving is that all of our banana trees were also gifted to us by friends! Abundance and gratitude all around!

BK Bananas
These banana bunches are HUGE and HEAVY!

Pineapple
And a pineapple soon to be harvested!

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Dragon Fruit Flower

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Shortly after we moved here we planted a bunch of trees and plants. We had a huge mess of vines and weed trees to clear out, but we wanted to get started with the fruit trees as soon as possible since it can sometimes take 5 + years to see fruit. One of the things we planted was dragon fruit also known as Pitaya or Pitahaya. It is a cactus-looking plant that, in the wild, grows up the sides of jungle trees and then when it reaches the tops, it drops over the sides and starts flowering.

We planted ours on a fence so that we would be able to harvest any fruit. We have since then removed that fence, but so as to not disturb the plant, we staked it and just sort of forgot about it since it is no longer in an ideal location. Well, lo and behold, I noticed it was forming a flower!

Dragon fruit flower
Dragon fruit flower forming

We were really surprised, because we have not done anything for this plant and I think it could really use a better location than right in the middle of the yard. A couple of days after seeing this bloom form, I went outside to check on it at night and saw that it was in its full display.

Cool dragon fruit flower
In full glory (with a little gecko stowaway)

 


In this short video you can see the size of the bloom in comparison with my hand

It only blooms for one night and by the morning it was starting to fade. It is pollinated by night animals if the bees don’t get it in the early morning. We also collected a little pollen in case we see more flowers come up. It is unlikely that we will see fruit from this particular flower, but we are hoping to get more plants and cross pollinate varieties as well. Dragon fruit are some of the most beautiful fruits as well so we are looking forward to that. Until then, the flower and its awesome aroma was thrill enough.

Daytime dragon fruit flower
Pitaya flower by light of the morning

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Miracle Fruit Taste Tripping

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As part of the tropical fruit video series we’ve been doing, I decided miracle fruit should be next on the docket. We have three small trees and recently two of them started fruiting!

Miracle fruit
Miracle fruit berries growing on the tree

Miracle fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) is a little different from most of the other fruits of the tropics because the fruit itself is not really so much a food as a food enhancer or transformer. It makes nearly anything sour taste sweet after eating just one berry! The effect on the taste buds lasts a little less than an hour depending on the person.

When Britton and I first tried it, we were amazed and astounded that foods like lemons and limes tasted like lemon merengue and limeade. So we brought a couple of berries to a party and everyone who tried it was also wowed by the powers of this fruit. We did learn that not everything sour should be changed however! At the party wine changed to a flat Dr. Pepper taste and Medalla tasted watered down. The reactions people had to this amazing fruit gave me the idea to get a few friends together to try miracle fruit for themselves. This video is the result. Not only does the video demonstrate the magic of miracle fruit, but it also showcases some of the wonderful and adventurous people who live in/near Rincon. Enjoy.

 

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