Las Plantas
Las Plantas
We have been interested in some of the different foods that are grown here. One of the strangest looking is the breadfruit. It looks sort of like a osage orange on steroids. These things are huge! The big ones we saw in the market were a foot and a half long. We have not eaten any yet as we have not gotten specific cooking instructions but you can bake it, boil it, pickle it or make it into a paste. Breadfruit grows on trees. This is the plant they were trying to keep watered when the Mutiny on the Bounty occurred.
One of the local favorites we have tried and like is jamaica . This is a cold red drink made as a tea from the petals of a local flower. We have been drinking jamaica here for several years. A few weeks ago I was taking pictures of a pretty red flower. I asked a passing gentleman if he knew what kind of flower it was and he told me it was jamaica .
Another local food we have tried is jicama. This is a root vegetable. It is like zucchini in that it does not have much taste of its own but absorbs seasoning it is cooked with. One odd thing about jicama is that you can peel the skin off it almost like peeling a orange. My favorite jicama recipe involved soaking in it lime juice for about an hour and then sprinkling it with salt and paprika and eating it in raw sticks. This is a very tasty low calorie snack.
Passionflowers grow wild down here. After the flowers die there is a gourd looking thing. I had heard that these were poisonous. But the other day I saw two teenagers climbing up a fence to get them, which they promptly ate. When I asked them they said that these fruits were delicious, although I did not try them and have no plans to unless I can get more information.
Bananas are growing in peoples yards in Bucerias. We have also seen banana plantations. The banana plant did not surprise me but I did not know that there was a big red flower and the bananas grew what seemed to me to be upside-down above the flower.
Prickly pear cacti grow all over this area. I knew the fruit was edible. What I did not know was you can eat the leaves and they are delicious. You can buy them at the market after someone has cut off the spines and cut them is strips. These taste a little bit like bell peppers. We use them in salads.
Coconut palms grow everywhere in Bucerias. Many local people consider them as sort of a nuisance because they need to be harvested regularly lest they bonk someone on the head. I tried a taste of coconut milk when I saw someone cutting them down but I really did not care for it.
We can not find catnip in Bucerias. I thought I would get a little as a treat for Sherlock the condo cat. I looked up the word for it and asked a local herb man. He knew what I wanted but he did not have any and suggested I ask the local veterinarian. By the time I got around to the vetÂs I had forgotten the word. After a rather energetic pantomime of a cat who was high on catnip I got the idea across. Oh yes, he said the plant that makes little kitties crazy, I donÂt have any.
(Si, la planta por gatitos hace loco! No tengo.)
Speaking of crazy a scruffy looking old man tried to sell me what he said was peyote the other day. He must have felt instinctively that I was a child of the sixties. It looked a lot like moldy mushrooms to me, but I will never know for sure as I declined to purchase any. Is that stuff legal down here? Tomorrow we plan to visit the botanical garden where we can learn more about the plants of Mexico .
Pictures can be found at:
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/dxterrible/album/576460762389728414
Rebecca and Dan
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