Since we live in the tropics, we planted tons of exotic trees that produce fruit that we’ve never even heard of, let alone tasted. One of those trees is the Pachira Glabra or “French Peanut” tree and it just recently bloomed and gave us our very first French peanuts!

After we returned from our recent adventures in California, I noticed that the french peanut tree had produced a single blossom. I thought that a single blossom on an 18 foot tree was pretty funny, but didn’t think much of it, until Stefan pointed out two odd looking “fruits” on the tree a few weeks later. Not knowing when to pick the French peanuts, I just let them be. To my dismay, the other day I noticed that one of the fruits had dropped, busted open and was empty! Someone ate my french peanuts!! Luckly, upon closer inspection, the french peanuts had just been scattered and I was able to collect them from the grass.

The Pachira Glabra tree produces a fruit that has a very hard outer shell, similar to a coconut. The inside is soft and furry and contains about a dozen of the edible french peanuts. The nuts have a hard shell that you peel off and then you can eat the nut. AND…they are actually pretty darn delicious! I think they taste like a cross between peanuts and macadamia nuts. Can’t wait for more!

The noni that I picked from our tree today:

Just smelling a ripe noni makes me gag a little bit (and I have a pretty strong stomach), and if fresh noni wasn’t bad enough, the traditional way to “juice” them is by sticking them in a jar in the sun for a few weeks and letting it “ferment” (rot) so that the juice seeps out. I don’t know about you, but I was taught that eating rotting stuff is not a good idea. With that in mind, we havn’t done much with our noni, but recently a neighbor sent me some information on an alternative way of juicing the noni that does not involve letting it rot in a jar. It’s called “freeze juicing” and this is how you can extract the noni juice this way:

- Pick hard white noni.
- Let it ripen/soften for a couple of days (1 – 5 days).
- Put in a container and freeze for 6 – 12 hours.
- Remove from the freezer and let it thaw completely (6 – 12 hours at room temperature)
- Transfer the resulting juice into a container and store in the fridge.
- Noni juice should be good for 2 weeks if refrigerated.

Apparently, this method of juicing the noni results in a juice that is less disgusting and the beneficial properties of the noni juice remains intact.

I just picked my first batch of noni to try the “freeze juicing” technique, so I’ll let you know how it goes!

- Feed them to Sydney (she doesn’t like it that much)
- Dehydrate it (still tastes funky to me)
- Make pepper from the seeds (wasn’t flavorful enough to be used in place of pepper)
- Add green papaya to our salads (this is really good! Thanks for the suggestion Katrina!)
- Feed them to the horses next door (they love it)
- Add it to smoothies (just don’t add too much so you don’t get that funky foot aftertaste)
- Make papaya jam (this is REALLY good!)

Most recently I made papaya jam and it was really, really good and really, really easy. This is what you need:

5 cups of mashed papaya
1/4 cup orange juice
2 cups of sugar
60g of pectin

Remove the papaya seeds, chop up the papaya and mash it up. Leave it chunky if you like chunks of fruit in your jam or throw it in the food processor to make it smoother. Heat the papaya, orange juice and pectin. When it begins to boil stir in the sugar. When it begins to boil again, let it boil for 1 minute (be careful to not let it boil for longer as you risk over-cooking the pectin which can cause your jam to not set correctly). Ladle the jam while it is still hot into sterilized canning jars and let the jam cool.

Wasn’t that easy?! The original recipe called for 5 cups of sugar, but even cutting it down to 2 cups left the jam very sweet (so sweet, in fact that I am going to try it with 1 cup next time). The only hard part to this papaya jam recipe is finding pectin in Puerto Rico. I ended up ordering it on eBay. You can also find it on Amazon.com, but you have to buy it in bulk.

Here is another recipe for papaya jam, that I have not tried yet, but it looks good (and you don’t need pectin):

1 cup papaya
2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Mash the papaya, mix with sugar and heat to a boil. Reduce heat and continue cooking while stirring constantly. When the mixture becomes sticky, add butter and lemon juice. Stir for 1 minute. Let cool.

Anyone have other suggestions on good uses for papaya?

Before I tell you that Cafe Rico makes the best whole bean coffee, I need to set the foundation of what kind of coffee drinker I am. Here is a shot;

• I would prefer no coffee at all to gas station coffee
• If three cups in a row doesn’t give me the jitters, it’s not worth my time
• Adding a table spoon of sweetened condensed milk should only slightly lighten the color
• Whole coffee beans should be oily
• The best coffee is brewed in a French Press

Ok, with that said, if you are a Maxwell house drinker or don’t mind gas station coffee (in the middle of Texas), my claim of the best coffee in Puerto Rico probably isn’t one you need to pay attention to.

Cafe Rico Espresso 100% Cafe Puro En Grano” (whole bean coffee) is absolutely the best coffee in Puerto Rico. It is roasted on the South Coast of Puerto Rico in Ponce and a one pound bag costs about $6.

I’ve tried to like all the locally grown and roasted organic coffee beans but they are all super expensive and I haven’t found one that could stand up to the bold flavor and kick in the ass caffeine buzz a cup of French Pressed Cafe Rico will give you.

I buy Cafe Rico at the Econo grocery store in Rincon and I am guessing it can be found in any grocery store around Puerto Rico. Here is a picture of the bag for your reference.

Cafe Rico - The Best Puerto Rican Coffee

We’ve learned lots of stuff from garden 1.0, garden 2.0, garden 2.5 and garden 3.0 and our current garden is doing AMAZING. While many plants say they do best in full sun, I don’t know of many plants that can survive and thrive in full PUERTO RICAN SUN. We moved the garden down by the mango tree where it gets a nice dose of sun and an equally nice dose of shade during the day. Currently, our garden is producing lettuce, cucumbers, bell peppers, cilantro, basil, zucchini, tomatoes and snap peas, and will soon be producing jalapanos, habenero peppers, purple bell peppers, thai chilis, lemon cucumbers and leeks.

Does any one know the best time to pick bananas? While they are still green or when they start to turn yellow?

In addition to bananas, we could not believe how much the papaya plants had grown in the two months we were off the island. I would say they are ten times the size from when we left and there are 20+ papayas hanging off of that tree!

In the madness of preparing for our first cross country trip with the baby we forgot to harvest and eat our first pineapple and it went bad by the time we got back…Bummer! But we do have 6 more pineapple plants in the ground so hopefully we will get another soon.

It’s so cool to finally be able to eat the fruits of our labor (literally)! So far we have produced the following food from our land: mangos, papayas, pineapples, avocados, kumquats, limon dulce, noni, tomatoes, lettuce, basil, rosemary, string beans, calabaza, snap peas, jalapenos, edamame, chives, bell peppers, peanut butter fruit, starfruit and cilantro. It’s like Farmville, but for real! Right Robin?

When I left California I was mountain biking whenever there weren’t waves and was really getting into it. I brought a nice bike down here and have ridden a few times, but haven’t really fallen into the mountain bike scene down here, so right now that bike is barely being used. I am surfing everyday there are waves, but the surf season is going to be coming to an end pretty soon and I am going to have to find something new to keep me occupied until the baby arrives

Summer likes going to the track (the streets are dangerous) once the sun goes down and gets her workout doing circles rocking out to music and listening to her iPod’s Nike Sport Kit that tells her how far she has gone, how she is doing compared to other exercise sessions along with words of encouragement from different professional athletes.

I go to the track with Summer when we aren’t spending enough time together because of work or surf, but I don’t really like going around in circles for my exercise, I prefer doing something that has a side effect of healthiness…like surfing, mountain biking, skin diving, skateboarding, walking the golf course and walking to the bar (just kidding).

We both love riding bikes and pretty much left the beach cruiser life in San Diego because of all the hills here. Well, we decided that the only hill we really need to battle is the one up to our house. Once we get to the bottom of the hill we can cruise from town south all the way to Calvache without any real hills and north all the way to the Dome without any real hills to climb. We decided, it’s time to purchase two earth cruisers so we can comfortably ride around Rincon, get some exercise and spend time together.

We headed out of Rincon on Saturday on a mission to come home with two 3 speed cruisers. On our hit list of stores: Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Sams Club and Ciclo Mundo. We stopped at the fruit stand on the 115 on the left hand side for a glass of Mavi Frio and some fruit. We had to take a picture of the grapefruit, look at the size of this thing! It’s as big as our baby (estimated size)!!!! After about 2 hours of looking for bikes (along with an hour of browsing the baby section in Sears) we struck out. Every store has 18 speed bikes and fancy looking mountain bikes but no one had a 3 speed cruiser. Come on people!

When I got home, I went on eBay and found the exact bikes we want and they weren’t even expensive, until you factored in the $156 in shipping it was going to cost to get them to Puerto Rico. Hopefully we’ll be able to find a bike store or bicycle shop in San Juan that has cruisers for sale, because now I am really in the mood for a bike ride.

I am not going to get started on their fruit/vegetable selection, but I will mention that they have had GREAT apples lately (usually they are bruised and soft) and their Roma tomatoes (they must be seasonal, cause they usually don’t have Romas) are delicious. They are actually RED!

We have been making it a habit to make split up our food shopping to a few different places to make up for the grocery stores shortcomings. We go to Sams Club for a lot of our dry goods and drinks (eh hem….Medallia/Wine) and fruit/vegetables. The problem with buying bulk vegetables/fruit is that they go bad unless we really focus on using them. After all, there are only two of us so a 10 pound bag of spinach goes a long way.

There is a gas station called La Placita on Rt. 115 at the turn going up to our house (also at the fort of Rt 413 to the right) that buys all the local homeowners fruits and vegetables. A buddy of mine that has an Avocado tree that produces hundreds of Avocados every season has La Placita come and pick every Avo off of the tree and he gets paid $.30 each. He could get a buck for them if he sold them himself on the side of the road, but not many people with jobs have time for that. Any hoooooo, La Placita has great locally grown fruit. For the past three weeks they have had delicious Avocados, Watermelons, Star Fruit and Pineapples. I didn’t really pinch pennies when I lived in California because I bought what I wanted regardless of the price as a reward to my 70 hour work week, so I don’t know how reasonable his prices are, but I am ready and willing to pay for his produce. I can honestly say that in the past two weeks I have had the best watermelons and pineapples of my life.

Do any of you have any Rincon local secrets for your grocery shopping? If you do, I’d love to hear them…we’re always looking to expand our grocery list.

Look! Little Starfruits!

A green starfruit and the pretty pink blossoms the trees produce:

I wasn’t really that into starfruit when I lived in California, because the only starfruit you could get were fairly flavorless. But, when you can pick a starfruit off of a tree when it’s bright yellow and ripe, it’s SO delicious. You can eat the skin and there are no seeds or core, so it’s kind of a pick n go fruit. The taste is sweet, but not too sweet and the texture is sort of like a cross between a pear and an apple.

Another big plus is that the starfruit tree is actually really pretty. It has bright green leaves and pretty little pink flowers when it blooms. I’m glad we planted it in the front yard .

More cool stuff about starfruit (or carambola): Starfruit is consider to be a “superfruit” because it is high in vitamin C, rich in antioxidants, while being low in sugar, acids and sodium. It also makes a great garnish as it makes perfect little star shapes when cut in slices.