- 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?

Shipwrecks – Everything on the menu is great, but it is expensive. My absolute favorite is the Tuna Tamari Salad. It’s $24 but it is HUGE and could easily feed two people.

Calypso – This is a touristy bar/restaurant, but it’s also a favorite with all the locals. The food is actually very good and reasonably priced. Stefan claims that the churassco steak plate is the best steak in town and trust me, he’s tried them all. They also have good vegetarian or dorado burritos, a decent salad and great drinks.

Pool Bar – This bar/restaurant is a very cool place to get a few drinks and grab some sushi. The sushi is some of the best I’ve had in Puerto Rico (Although, most sushi in Puerto Rico is horrible, so…take that for what it is worth).

Bungers – They just started doing fish tacos (not fried!) and they are SO good and very affordable. I highly recommend them. Bungers also has a good salad and the pastas/meats and whatnot are decent.

Superfoods – This is actually a brand new health food store in town that also serves lunch from 11am – 3pm, and is our new favorite place to eat. It’s very affordable and everything we’ve had so far has been delicious.

Rincon by the Seas – They have a really good chicken breast plate, a decent salad and a delicious hummus appetizer, although I havn’t tried anything else there yet.

So there you have my picks for the best places to eat in Rincon, PR. Please let us know where your favorite Rincon restaurant (or pinchos stand!) is, as we’re always looking to try new/good food!

I came up with the idea of making some home made bread so we researched a few recipes on line and I was off to the grocery store to buy supplies. I never knew that bread had so few ingredients.

We preheated the oven and added the yeast to warm water to resuscitate it and then mixed up our dough. We let it rise for about 30 minutes and then popped it in the oven. A few minutes later we had a delicious loaf of home made whole wheat bread. It was much denser than most bread but it was delicious. I am gonna try this same recipe again, but this time I am going to add a few nuts and cranberries…I’ll let you know how it turns out.

With that, we are definitely going to try to grow cucumbers. I see them all over the grocery store year around, so they must do well here. Tell me if you know otherwise or have any pointers for us.

Here are two Cucumber Recipes my mom sent me today:

Cucumber Soup

3 cucs about 8 inches long, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch chunks
1/2 cup white onions or whatever kind
3 Tbsp butter
6 cups chicken broth (bouillon)
2 Tsp wine vinegar
1 Tsp dill weed
4 Tbsp Farina or dried potato flakes. This thickens the soup.

Cook onions slowly in butter until soft. Add cucumber chunks, chicken broth, vinegar and herbs. Bring to a boil add farina. Simmer for about 30 minutes partialy covered. Puree and carefully season with salt and white pepper. Add 1/2 cup of sour cream and stir. May be served hot or cold. Sprinkle with dried dill.

Baked Cucumbers:

6 cucs 8 inches long
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp sugar
3 Tbsp melted butter
1/2 Tsp dill
3to 4 Tbsp minced green onions
1/8 tsp pepper

Toss the cucs in a bowl with vinegar, salt and sugar. Let stand for at least 30 min. Drain and pat dry. Put cucs in baking dish with butter, herbs, onions and pepper. Put into 375 oven for about 1 hour, tossing 2 or 3 times until crisp. I always double the receipe because they are just as good cold the next day.

I wonder if it’s because we have more bees pollinating our plants now? Or do watermelons take a while to establish themselves?

Conclusion: Edamame (soy) beans are easy to grow in Puerto Rico!

I am still patiently waiting for the heirloom tomatoes to give us some treats, but they seem healthy and happy.

Just like the Kruses, our watermelon (sandia) plant never really did much and it has finally started to flourish. Today we saw the first tiny little watermelons forming on the vine.

The birds and the bees are enjoying all of our new trees and plants and are busy pollinating for us . It’s nice to see the animals flocking to our yard since it used to be a big dry dust bowl.