Flaming bananas...and I don't mean as in flambed....
The house is full of fruit awaiting processing with all the urgency that accompanies tropical conditions and ripe produce.
If it wasn't ripe when it came through the door it jolly well is by the time it's been there half an hour...or so it seems.
And it has to be used.
I've managed to palm off the plantains to the pig.....the 'quadrata' - .a sort of stumpy plantain - is, for the moment, quiescent, but the hands of bananas are being delivered to the kitchen with a speed and regularity which amounts to sadism....
I have made banana tortillas and banana tortilla mix for the freezer, I have made black bean and banana bake - which sounds foul but which is surprisingly good....and put more mix in the freezer....I have made banoffee to the astonishment of Costa Rican guests....Banana bread and cake lurk, frozen, to be produced as an alternative to Turkish cake and the whole house resounds to the glop and gurgle of the airlocks as yet more banana wine shambles to be born.
And yet they come...
As if life was not complicated enough without the passion fruit...to be liquidised, strained and frozen for future fruit drinks and for caramel passion fruit flan....
And the tangerines...to dry the skins for Chinese recipes
And the lemon mandarins...to freeze the juice for future drinks...
And the Sevilles...snatched from Danilo to make marmelade..
And the limes...to make lime pickle....
And the pink guava. to be cooked and strained, before freezing...to make jelly in the future
And the cas...to be pureed and strained for drinks and to be sweetened for 'pretend' apple sauce with pork...
Not to speak of the purchases..
The pithaya for drinks...
The mamon chino as the local version of lichee...
The zapote....like an avocado shaped medlar...
Strawberries..for jamming.
And, unlike Europe, instead of making jam direct I am freezing the fruit or its extract as Costa Rica has a shortage of glass jars and little tradition of preserving.
Not for nothing do I think of it as the land of the plastic bag.
Sauces, jams, mayonnaise...you name it, it comes in a plastic bag, so, for preserving you come up against a huge barrier...
What to put it in?
I throw out nothing in glass..but still short of material I went to the recycling centre and had a huge row with the women running it who wanted more for an empty jam jar than the jar and contents would have originally cost - my Spanish may be basic but it was quite up to expressing my views on exploitative green actiion.
Oh, and here comes the sweetcorn to be cooked and scraped for the freezer...
And the jocote is nearly ripe...
And the oranges are just ripening again.....
And, sod me...the blasted lemons are ready...
