Don’t worry, we did spend some time at the beach too!

Well we had a list of things we wanted to do on this trip; some for fun, some for utility. Of course, we often put off the fun and do the work first, but I think we did pretty good overall.

Here were our goals: what we didn’t get to are in red, and what we accomplished are in green.

* Plant banana trees (BK)
* Visit with ARC ENG -the architecture/engineering business in Rincon (CK)
* Visit the Rincon Treehouse place to talk about specifics (BK)
* Visit Mangosteen person in Mayaguez if we have enough time (CK)
* CRIM? We haven’t done this yet and probably should (neither really want to)
* Fix up kitchenette to have running water (BK)
* Get estimate for cost of our property ideas by local contractor
* Get hot running water rigged if possible (CK)
* Buy a heavy duty weed-wacker at Home Depot, as the property is probably very overgrown by now (BK)
*Take a surf lesson – if we have time (CK)
* Have a small little fire at night on the property (BK) (A reminder to be careful what you wish for!!)
*Walk to the beach from property (CK)
* Get rest of bees removed from walls if possible (BK)
* Find closest hospital (just in case-ha) -CK
*Find thrift or 2nd hand stores in the area (CK)

So as you can see, we got quite a lot of the major items taken care of in the time we were there. In addition to these things we also:

*Found our trees that we had planted last time and cleared away the vines and growth from around them
*Weed-wacked the whole fenced area and a little beyond the fence line
*Met with a variety of friends in Rincon/Moca for dinners and poker
*Tried new restaurants
*Planted more sprouted coconut palms
*Planted our avocado pits from the Avocado Party (we’ll see what happens!)
*Found a nearby hardware store in Rincon with prices better than Home Depot and a discount day (10% off on Saturdays) for women!

We still haven’t quite made a decision one way or the other about the wood house. We go back and forth and forth and back, sometimes in the same conversation. There are so many pros and cons to either decision. Getting the bees out of the house really helped us feel more comfortable in it and around it. We could see more potential, and less of a desire to “just get rid of it”. Still not sure though. We would have a long way to go to make it feel like home. Next up for it will be bat removal!! Yikes.

I think we have a pretty decent plan to get the cabana very livable and then we can make our big decision on the wood house. It is definitely cool to have a wood house, as it makes it seem more like Hawaii-style housing: warm and inviting and less like concrete storm bunkers, but as we have seen with all the animals in the house it may be a little TOO inviting.  As you can tell we’re still in limbo on that one.

The wood house from the roof of the cabana

In addition to the bats and the bees, we also had some unexpected canine visitors on our last day there, but they were friendly:

It’s not really a yard in the same way you would think of a lawn in the states. The front area is more of a parking place, but with all the growth from the last 8 months it made it like a yard. Before he whacked the heck out of it though, I wanted to check if there were any plants that I knew of that were good. I still don’t know all my tropicals as well as I do my backyard Colorado plants, but I can tell a mango tree from a citrus or a banana (and there are a lot of mango seedlings too!).

So without further ado: Like sand through an hourglass, these are the weeds of our yard. Please help me find out what these are or correct me if I’m wrong in my guess:

Not sure what this is, but it’s really pretty!

The Traveler’s Palm has about three babies sprouted at the bottom of it.

We found more sprouted coconut palms and the one we found and planted last time we were here looks to be doing good.

Here’s the one we planted last time we were here. I know these are coconut palms but does anyone know the type? I think they are the “water coconut” variety and not the meat coconut. How can you tell the difference? How can you tell when they are seedlings?

Anyone know what this is? Is it edible?

Mother-In-Law’s Tongue -this is a houseplant in the states but here it is a yard weed!!

There’s a ton of these types of plants on the steep side of the property. I’m thinking maybe Ornamental Ginger plant? Is the ginger in ornamental gingers edible or good for you?

These aren’t weeds, but they are Mandarin Oranges we found on a tree on the property!!

This one looks just like houseplants I have seen often. Not sure of the name though.

This is just what we found on the first 1/4 acre. We still need to trim down a little further and see the plants we planted last time and take off some of the vines from other fruit trees that we know of on the remaining 3 3/4 acres! It’s amazing how just looking at weeds can be so fascinating. I guess that’s why we go places out of our comfort zone. We learn something new from even the smallest things.

A nice spread of avocado and other snacks!

The Avocado Diva brought all of these avocados straight from small-scale farms in California. We learned all about different types of avocados including such varieties as Zutano, Bacon, Pinkerton, and the most famous: Haas. The type we were most impressed by was the Mexicola! According to the Avocado Diva, Brenda, this is the original wild Mexican avocado. It looks sort of like a fig or a plum and the skin is edible! The skin has a sort of nutty flavor to it. This is also the variety that you can use the licorice smelling leaves in iced tea. What’s more, is unlike most of the hybridized varieties, this one you can grow true to form from the seed. So we are going to try and sprout some here and maybe in PR too!

The small black, smooth-skinned Mexicola Avocado in comparison with another variety

We bought a variety box of them and are looking forward to enjoying our gourmet avocados for the next couple of weeks! Yay! We did find two or three avocado trees on our property in Rincon, so this makes us all the more excited to eat off our land! We learned today that there are avocados that mature at different seasons. Some are summer varieties and some are winter while others are year-round producers. We would love to be able to eat these all year round!

Holding a small Mexicola next to our box of goodies

Recruiting for the cooking class at Milliken’s Beef and Bean Day

Even before this new assignment at work, I’ve always been interested in nutrition and good food. But I’ve never been much for the cooking side of things. Eventhough I know that people who cook more at home tend to be healthier than those who eat out, I still just never got that into cooking.I love to eat good, whole, homemade, delicious and nutritious food, but always thought of cooking as a pain and only something Britton and I had time to do on the weekends. The work week usually meant (and sometimes still means) a quick throw-together of pasta or rice, frozen vegetables and fish or chicken.

It is still hard to fit in time to cook, but ever since I have been coordinating and collaborating to help facilitate a program called “Cooking Matters” in Milliken I’ve been intrigued with trying a few new things. In Cooking Matters we have a nutrition professor from CSU (Fort Collins) as well as another health educator helping to teach the course which is primarily geared at the underserved populations.

Everyone always has their usual bag of tricks when it comes to preparing food (like our evening throw-togethers), so a healthy cooking class helps to open your eyes to the wonders of all sorts of foods.

Cumin-Would be nice to grow in the garden -I wonder if it would do well in PR

In fact, I think I’ve found my new favorite spice: cumin! I’ve never even paid much attention to it until in the class we made hummus -which is just basically pureed garbanzo beans, garlic, salt and cumin -so easy! And the cumin makes all the difference! It is also what makes Mexican food so delicious. Not only that, but this spice, like many spices boasts health benefits as well such as being a good source of iron, helping with digestion, and even cancer prevention!

Anyhow, we had a bout of cold, rainy weather this week and weekend, so for fun, we stayed in and cooked up a bunch of food. Some of these included:

Hummus with pita chips
Pearl Barley and vegetable chicken soup
Chai tea
Enchilada lasagna -slice up whole grain tortillas into strips about the size of lasagna noodles -do not cook! In a cooking pan sautee chicken, add enchilada sauce, can of tomatoes, lots of spices like cumin and oregano, sliced bell peppers (and jalapenos if you like it hot), black olives, etc. Put this mixture on top of the strips of tortillas in a large dish (13×9) and layer as you would lasagna. Add shredded cheese and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Uncover for another ten if you like the cheese browned. Let sit for a bit. Add fat free greek yogurt or sour cream if desired on top.
Apple Crisp -Made with about 5 fresh apples with the skin still on sliced to about an 1/8 inch. Pumpkin pie spices (ginger, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon), brown sugar and a tiny bit of flour. For the topping (the crisp): A little butter, brown sugar, quick oats, flour and more spices mixed together and put on top. Then bake in the  350 degree oven for about 30-45 minutes.

Slice of Carrot Cake!

Betty Crocker’s Homemade Carrot Cake -Made with 3 cups or about 8 freshly grated carrots and applesauce in a 1 to 1 complete exchange of the oil and decreased the sugar from 2 cups to 1 1/2 cups. Also added nutmeg, ginger, and cloves in addition to the cinnamon that was called for. Added chopped walnuts. And made the cream cheese frosting Betty Crocker called for (but made with lower fat neufchatel cheese). This was SOO good. And not too terrible nutrition wise!

Yum! Lasagna

Then last night we cooked up traditional lasagana only we used ground turkey in place of beef and added a lot of vegetables.

Cooking is still a pain with all the prep work of chopping and dicing, recipe reading and substituting and of course the cleaning up afterward, but the results are sooo delicious and so much better than any pre-processed options out there.

So while I started out as the reluctant coordinator of this cooking class, I am definitely turning into a convert! Plus I’ve been able to meet all sorts of nice people in the class as well. I would suggest to anyone who has “food issues” -like being overweight, picky, or a fast-food fiend that the best help is a cooking class! Very practical and fun! You control what is in your food and therefore what goes into your body. It is a freeing feeling. Cooking matters! It really does!

Once a year Cassie and I like to camp out in our backyard in a tent that was given to us as a wedding gift.  I spent quite a bit of time camping up in the mountains when I was growing up.  While it was fun, it’s one of those things that I have done quite a bit so it isn’t something that I feel I need to do.  Sleeping outside under the stars with Cassie is a lot of fun and we don’t have to drive, pack food, pack clothes and figure out all the details involved with a ‘camping trip’.

Our Tent

I used to also camp out in my backyard as a kid and across the street at my friend Matt’s house.  It was a lot of fun and I am sure parents enjoy it because your sleepover (loud kids) is outdoors!

We figured we had better get our once a year backyard camp out done because we have entered into the Fall season (maybe not officially, but you can feel it).  The weather is cooler, the veggies are ripe and the growing season is slowly coming to an end.  We’ve been getting more food from our garden lately too.

Fruit, Vegetables and Eggs

With the change in season we are starting to think about Puerto Rico too!  I hope there isn’t too much damage to the property, but if there is we can just fix and mend like we usually do!  We really enjoy our summer here in Colorado, but the winter is so long it will be nice to have a place to go where we can plant, pick garden and camp out!

I hope all our friends are doing well in PR after Irene.  The few Facebook posts we’ve seen indicate it wasn’t too bad and I hope that is the case.  I’d actually like to be down there for a tropical storm / hurricane at some point.  Just for the experience of it.  Not a major one of course!

So here is an update of some of our trees and some new additions:

Last year, 2010 we planted a fruit cocktail tree. This is what it looked like:

Fruit Cocktail Tree of Plums, Nectarines and Apricots in 2010

Today! It has grown about 4 feet in a year!

It even has plums already!

Our peach tree is doing well too. It hasn’t grown as tall as the fruit cocktail tree, but it’s gotten really full and bushy. I was noticing that the leaves of the peach tree are similar to mango trees. The fruit is somewhat similar too in color, taste and texture. I wonder if they are related botanically. Things that make you go hmm.

Here it is (to the right in front of the porch) last year

Peach Tree Summer 2011

We also planted some apple trees. We have two “Lil Big” Honeycrisp apple trees which are extra dwarf apple trees that are expected to only grow 6 feet max. The other apple tree is a 5-in-one apple tree. There are supposed to be five varieties of apple grafted together like the fruit cocktail tree. That maximizes our small space in the backyard to be a diverse food producing area. Still no apples or flower blooms yet though.

The Lil Big Apple Tree is in front and the 5-in-1 apple tree is behind

In addition to the trees though, we do have tomatoes coming in. The pepper plants are doing ok and I think we might get some cucumbers too. Also Omeleto is an egg-laying machine. Even though her eggs are smaller than the old chickens, she lays a lot more consistently. I love leghorns for this quality. Plus since we hand raised her she is not as skittish as old Omelette was. Summer is such an awesome time in Colorado. Lots of food, fun and flowers too! I wish I could do this year-round. Oh, wait. We can…in Puerto Rico! I can’t wait to check on our fruit trees down there. We planted a mango tree, corazon tree, and guava. Hopefully they are growing good now!

Green Tomatoes

When we fed them to the chickens we thought they would go nuts. But no. The chickens liked them, but were not as enthusiastic about them as I thought they would be. It was as if they were saying, “yah, we get those all the time out here”. But they still ate them all! Good protein and omega-3s for our eggs! Circle of life and all that.

Yum! A jar of grasshoppers