ElPortalALE.org is the Architecture, Landscape & Environment Committee's site for El Portal, Florida.

Another for albumtacos

My contribution to Album Tacos:

Starless Carina Nebula

These passionfruits keep falling off a vine climbing a big tree in our back yard. Who knew we even had passionfruits? Also, they are delicious.

Interesting video regarding the metabolic cycle of sugars.

delicious japanese jalepenos

send in the clowns



after i managed not to mangle the banana walnut bread, i decided to try my hand at banana cream pies, with and without meringue. i was wishing my sister, who is a baker, was here to make the pie crust, but i had to make do with premade crust. the custard is delicious! next goal is to make a layer cake with custard, bananas, and strawberries . . . right after my goal of not smashing a cream pie in someone's face!

hey, mr. tallyman . . .



remember that big banana bunch i posted about for the first time a while back? well, they've ripened! each banana is about 4" long with a delicious tropical (pineapple-y?) flavour. i've already eaten 4 today.

question: how long, if ever, will it take me to get sick of eating these bananas?

swampdog

kaiju big battel . . . in my backyard?

what are these?! from far away, they look like tiny scottie dogs wearing warming blankets, but from up close . . . they are like a 3-eyed spikey dragons with giant nostrils and little fangs?! adam made the mistake of brushing his arm against one, and his arm felt like it had been dragged through nettles. so, poisonous, to boot. these guys look like a japanese horror movie in the making.

"danger can happen!"

UPDATE: a friend of my mother-in-law had this to say, "this is the so-called saddleback caterpillar, which has perhaps the most potent sting of any in North America --- like an intense bout with stinging nettle. It is the immature form of a brown moth, Acharia stimulea (family Limacodidae) thatoccurs widely over the eastern US; the caterpillars feed on all sorts of garden and native plants. We do not have anything like it on the West Coast, although we have other, unrelated stinging cateropillars.

mangos!

it's that time of year in south florida, where the chances of you getting beaned on the head by a delicious falling mango are 1:1. sitting in our friends' yard in the grove last night, we heard at least 4-5 mangos thud to the ground. our friend has some sort of bat-like sonar for finding those things in the dark. it's definitely time for my mom to come visit and pass on some indian recipes for mango preparation.

Best Mac and Cheese Recipe

Angostura Bitters
Distilled from who knows what in Trinidad. Angostura bitters taste good in fruit drinks, and reduce the stomach upset caused by eating too much. Thank heavens.

we finally cut into this homemade cheese that came from dizzy the cow, who grazes around adam's folks' place in southern california. we let it age about 8 months. it's a sharp cheddar that has a mild flavor initially but then explodes all over your mouth. it's really strong! we used it with a pasta dish the other night with tasty results.

adam harvesting coriander from our backyard:

banana flower stirfry
see that big purple flower hanging off our banana tree in the previous post? well, using a recipe from Kerala Kitchen, we decided to prepare our banana tree blossom into a meal. it was absolutely delicious.

check out the bananas in our banana tree! adam planted this tree one year ago, and it's already taller than the house. it also dropped a second tree that's about half its height. obviously, the bananas are not ready to be eaten but hopefully soon! the flowers that fall out of the tree have these cool little sacs of nectar that ants and other insects drink. the flowers smell a little like jackfruit, actually, and the nectar tastes like a thin honey syrup.

i'm also attaching a picture of our burgeoning jackfruit tree, which adam planted a few weeks ago. (manju is lounging underneath!) we have no idea when/if we'll get some fruit, but keep your fingers crossed . . . we've gotten some small strawberries, too. their consistency is nice, but their flavour is sort of bland.

Years ago, we went to Bali for a whole month. It was an amazing place for a million reasons, but unsurprisingly, one of our favorite things about the place was the food. So much so that we took a cooking class while we were there. Now that our banana tree is really going, Adam has been trying recipes that call for cooking things in the banana leaves. Last night, we made something called "tum." It's basically a finely shredded mixture of meat (we used fish), garlic, chilies, and other spices, wrapped up in a banana leaf piece and steamed. The little packets are tied closed using strips of the banana leaf stem. The strips are surprisingly tough, sinewy, and cord-like! Once the tum were finished, we squeezed the juice from these tiny little oranges that are growing in our yard (they're kind of a cross between an orange and a kumquat) over the tum. It was delicious and spicy!

If you are lazy about sharpening your knives, like me, then you will like:

Ceramic Knives from Kyocera. They stay sharp.

This stuff must have crack in it.

Delicato Winery's Bota Box. 4 quality bottles worth of wine for $18. Stays fresh for a month.

Perennial Vegetables

What should we eat for dinner?

Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates - Fair Trade, Organic, Delicious. Winning.

Pomegranate Syrup. Good for souring things. try it with lamb and chicken. mix it in your girl drinks.

it's good.

Fage Greek Yogurt. Use it with a little salt instead of mayonnaise or sour cream.

This stuff is rad.