What we have been up to...

Life on the land has been intense in every way.

There are beautiful sunsets, unbelievable starry skies, amazing silence and such peacefulness.

Of course there is also ridiculous amounts of mosquitos and black flies (that bite even worse),

unending amounts of dust in the house, and all the inconveniences that come along with living

without a toilet, electricity and hot water.

There are moments when I want to scream out of frustration, (plenty of times I actually do scream); from the constant mess, the dirt, the food floating around wet in the cooler, the constant itching from bites and so forth. I remind myself, and the children that it is temporary and keep on going...

But I can honestly say that overall, even with all the little inconveniences,

life on the land is wonderful. 

It is so rich, so alive, so full of "real" work.

The days never seem long enough, so much to do, so much to create.

It is a canvas, a blank canvas, with unending amounts of possibilities, 

and we all love it for this. 

Living so in the middle of the raw nature, it absorbs me and full fills me so wonderfully.

This week we created a new bed. 

Nothing here is just like that, first finding the spot, the removing all rocks and roots.

 Then finding large rocks and building the walls around.

 Creating the pathways around the beds.

 Then adding the soil. We used a few different composts and some of our Bokashi ferment.

 I planted tomato seedligns that were ready for their permanent location, as well as some Kale and Basil.

 Keenan was a great help as usual...

 We harvested lettuce greens from the garden and made a yummy salad...

 with dates, onion, mango and cranberries.

The dressing was olive oil, balsamic vinaigrette, some juice from an orange and crushed garlic.

It was very delicious!!

 In a random space created by the making of a path and the roots of an old tree I planted some 

radish seedlings looking for a home.

 Kaleena enjoys helping with the watering...

Look a those broccoli plants..

 Repositioning our seedlings and tree cuttings to a more sunny spot.

I see a nursery in our future...

 The children were determined that we should have a christmas tree.

We found a last one a the local super market, so extremely dry that Keenan could easily carry it all on his own, and very proud to do so.

 And Sunday we finally had the house "clean" enough to bring it in and decorate it.

We will have Christmas in this house even if the dinner is on the floor, with the mosquitos and the dust

and no light :)

 Will you look at this spider eating a dragon fly for breakfast right outside our door,

no not door of course, because we don't have any doors, but the door opening.

 And of course I must have a few banana palm pictures too

 and the other day while watering, it started drizzling and this gorgeous rainbow grazed me with

its presence...beauty, beauty, beauty....

It really makes all the difference when everything else can seem momentarily overwhelming!

~Blessings~

Pibil, earthen oven and Yucatan Panuchos

On saturday after a work party at the land, Jose, our main man and also an amazing cook, prepared a typical Yucatan dish, perhaps  it is also a typical Mexican dish, not sure.

First one of the turkeys were sacrificed for the occasion, a most delicious meal was to be prepared after partners and friends had put in a few hours of manual labor on the land.

A Pibil was prepared, an earthen oven as it where, Pibil is a Mayan word that mean burried or cooked under ground, and is

a typical way of slow cooking in these part. 

Most typical is the slow cooking of a small pig, using the same recipe as for the turkey.

To prepare the animal for cooking it is basted in 

Achiote, a very red, very typical spice paste used here in the yucatan, 

the main ingredient of which is 

annato seeds.

It gives a wonderful flavor, and the Pibil renders a juicy and tender meat.

Once the bird is covered in Achiote it is placed in a big pot, a bit of water is added and finally it is covered with banana leaves, ideally I think it is wrapped in the banana leaf, and a tight fitting lit is placed on top. 

To prepare the Pibil, first a hole is dug, then a fire is lit using a 

high density type of wood that will

burn hot and long creating good coal, in NC the wood to use would have been Black Locust,

I can not remember which kind he told me they used here.

Once the fire has settled into burning embers, the big pot with the turkey is then 

placed onto the burning embers. Then boards are laid across the top

then a thick layer of leaf covered branches, then a few sacks that used to hold flour

and finally a thick layer of dirt.

For a good twelve hours or over night the bird slowly cooks in the

earthen oven, and can be left there for hours after the cooking is done, to simply stay warm.

The turkey was served to us all on top of Panuchos.

Panuchos is a variation to the corn tortilla that is served with all Mexican dishes so far as I can tell.

This kind of corn tortilla is baked a bit thicker than normal tortillas are, and therefor puffs up and makes a hollow inside that can then be filled with mashed black beans and fried. 

There are all kinds of Panuchos, in the sense that you can then add anything on top, our was topped with 

 raw finely chopped cabbage, red onion in the juice of bitter oranges

(this is something I have grown to love here, and is also very typical in all meaty dishes.

You cut a red onion in small pieces, pour boiling water over it and let it sit for a

few minutes, this to take the edge off the onion.

Then you pour out the water and add the juice of a bitter orange)

Anyways we added this on top of the cabbage, then some guacamole, some of the shredded turkey,

some crushed tomatoes as well as raw tomatoes, and finally traditionally

you add a nice dabble of habanero pepper sauce, I skip this step as the habanero is

ridiculously hot and burns my mouth from even a drop.

Besides the fried tortilla this is a healthy and extremely delicious meal,

and a specialty here on the Yucatan peninsula.

 I wish that once we live on the land Jose will introduce me to, and teach me how to prepare typical dishes of the region, and I will share them here in a weekly post.

Buen provecho!

~Blessings~

Chaya, a perennial green

Chaya, a new found love!

I am just starting to get familiar with the local food sources, 

and the first that really has me excited is the Chaya bush.

It is sometimes called  tree spinach and is native to this part of Mexico.

It is superior to spinach and other leafy vegetables in its nutritional value, here is a brief list of nutrients;

Percentages are of minimum daily requirement

%	Chaya	Alfalfa	Spinach
Protein	8.25	3.66	2.00
Crude Fibre	1.94	3.12	2.07
Calcium	421.00	12.00	49.00
Phosphorus	63.00	15.00	30.00
Iron	11.61	5.30	5.70
Vitamin A	8.52	0.74	2.48
Vitamin B1	0.23	0.13	0.03
Ascorbic Acid	0.35	0.14	0.10

My research is still very limited and I plan to get to know this plant much better.

For now I am happy to have found a perennial 

(I think it would perhaps be a tender perennial in other parts of the world) 

leafy green plant with such high nutritional value.

 Also chlorophyll amount is supposed to be very high, just like my beloved nettles, and I plan to make myself a jar daily of these greens soaked in boiled water for a cleansing water treat.

 We already have a few bushes on the land, I just planted a few more sticks the other day.

(Simply cut a few branches and stick in the ground to root.)

I harvest them with gloves as they do have little pesky hairs that really bother in the skin, 

more so than the sting of the nettle, in my opinion.

What I love best besides the nutritional value is that from a permaculture perspective they are perfect too.

I hope to fill this land with as many perennial foods as possible so that our intensive gardens might be minimized. Why struggle to grow spinach and leafy greens in this heat when these grow so happily, 

and I do not need to disturb the earth each growing season, or plant seeds again and again. 

Also the chickens love them, these bushes need to grow all around 

where the chickens roam to help feed them as well.

 So far I have tried them in two dishes, one a bean salad the other a spanish omelet.

For the bean salad I cooked them lightly with some green beans, 

(anywhere you read about Chaya it will tell you to cook before eating as they can release a toxin when raw, I have also spoken to some here who eat them raw, 

so far I do not have enough information to eat them raw and will 

stick to the cooked kind until better informed)

 Once lightly cooked with the green beans I added some chick peas and some brown beans, and tossed it all in a dressing of olive oil, lime, mustard and a bit of honey and salt.

It was very yummy, even the children ate it happily.

I also tried the leafs in my spanish omelet, and it was not a success, 

but only because I put too many and did not chop them finely enough.

~Blessings~

In the kitchen; Ginger sweets and fresh nut milk.

Ahh, look at these late summer beauties. This weekend we have had absolutely gorgeous weather and have spent lots of time outside, we did however also make some very yummy ginger candy that I wanted to share.

At the Saturdays farmers market I came across these fresh tender ginger, that needed no peeling, and have the added bonus of haveing many health benefits as well. The children having tried ginger chews before asked if we could please make our own, so we did, and we also made candied ginger and some ginger syrup.

First we made candied ginger, we used this recipe. we started by slicing the ginger into very thin slices.

I put about 8 slices in a pot with two cups of heavy cream and 2 sticks of cinnamon over very low heat in preparation for the chews which we made after.

The rest I put into a non reactive stainless steel pot, covered with water and simmered for ten minutes. drained the water off into a separate container, and repeated.

After the second draining I added the remaining ingredients into the pot, using the water from the first two boilings, and substituting half the sugar with honey. Stuck in a candy thermometer and let it boil till it reached 225 F, at which point I strained out the ginger pieces and shook them in a bag of sugar.

The syrup I saved in glass jars for use in teas and whatever else I can think of, if you like soda I think this syrup with some added club soda might come close to a ginger ale.

I also added a little to my cream for the caramels.

Lots of sugar in these recipes, clearly not something we will be making often:)

The children loved them, they certainly have a bite from the ginger, but they love them

At this point the cream had been infusing for a couple of hours, and I was ready to proceed with the chewy gingers. We used this recipe, we did substitute half the sugar with honey and I think probably all the sugar could be substituted with honey. Instead of corn syrup I used organic brown rice syrup.

I added all the ingredients to the pot, boiled them until they turned a darker brown, took it off the heat and added the cream carefully while stirring vigorously.

Once again popped in the thermometer and let it boil till it reached 250 F

After which I poured it into a foil lined stainless steel pan, well buttered.

I let it cool for a couple of hours before covering the tray and leaving it overnight in the fridge.

Today I cut it into pieces, and individually wrapped them in parchment paper.

Kaleena enjoyed this task, and was a great help as this was a sticky long job.

They came out amazing, I must say. If you like the ginger chews that you get at the health food store, you will love these, they are a little more subtle in the ginger flavor, just strong enough. Again the children loved them! I highly recommend them for that special treat, and besides the cutting and wrapping it was really pretty simple to make them.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

We also made fresh nut milk for our Spirulina shakes. I have often  soaked nuts over night to add to our shakes, but would still use store bought nut milks. Besides the constant waste of the containers which don't recycle, these milks are expensive and have ingredients in them that seem unnecessary.

So I decided that from now on I will make my own. It turned out delicious and is so easy to make.

I soaked a mixture of organic almonds, cashews and a few macadamias overnight (12-24 hours)

After which they were all puffed up

I put them into the blender, added water and blended. (about 1 cup of nuts for 3 cups of water, you could add more water depending on how creamy you like it, we like it rich)

I strained it through a mesh strainer, it could have used a double straining, but since we mostly use it in shakes we don't mind a little nut meal.
I added a drop of vanilla extract and a drop of agave in it as well.

(All the nut meal is great added in breads or can be dried and used later)

And here it is all fresh and yummy!

Of course we had to make a shake immediately , and the freshness really did make a difference.

So very yummy. Looking forward to avoid all the throw away carton use, as well as save money, at least we will be able to have organic for the same price as we usually pay for none organic.

~Happy cooking~