The Guest Blog

by Mario Machado—
Summer gardens here in Paraguay face a unique set of challenges. For one, the heat in this country is oppressive and, at times, completely unbearable. People have trouble enough staying hydrated and cool; plants are another business all together. While there are summer garden crops that work well even in this climate, they usually require attentive watering and a half-shade structure (called mediasombra in Spanish) if they are to survive, let alone produce fruit. Far out in the countryside, where life is hard and the days are already packed with work, it is common for farming families to allow their gardens to revert to patches of weeds over the summer.

Mario mounded the soil in his garden into five rectangular raised beds. In the center bed is a Leucaena, a leguminous tree he transplanted to the garden.

Unfortunately, such practices do not help in promoting household productivity, nutrition, or diversification—my mission as a Peace Corps volunteer. Here in the Southern Hemisphere, where seasons are reversed from those in the United States, summer runs from December through February. During those months, family diets are limited to foods they can purchase and not what they can produce. Additionally, allowing a garden to lie fallow for several months requires no labor input, but makes for several strenuous days of work before the garden can be planted again in the fall. Promoting summer gardens, or at least the productive use of garden space in the summer months, can do wonders for helping families in many aspects of their lives. And so, with these things in mind, I have started working on my own garden in the dead-hot days of midsummer in hopes of providing community members here in Guido Almada a few ideas or alternatives.

The beginnings of a compost pile.

I have begun by starting a compost pile, an easy practice here in the countryside where food scraps, dry organic material, and cow droppings are all too common (sometimes regrettably so—especially in the middle of a soccer field). In the several weeks to months that this little pile of goodness is getting ready for use with my fall vegetables, I have decided to take the garden space and begin a little soil recuperation. Soils here in Paraguay range from very rich and hearty, to very sandy and dry; where I happen to live, it is a little of both. Considering as well that the space I am using has already been used as a garden, I thought that a nice infusion of organic material and nitrogen into the soil were in order.

Along his garden fence, Mario dug a trench to assist with water infiltration.

The raised-bed structures in my garden (called tablones in Spanish) help in retaining water and providing space for root growth. I have double-dug each of the five raised beds, a technique that breaks up dirt a foot or more deep in the soil. In this practice, organic material can be mixed in to buff up the topsoil. I have also dug a trench around the perimeter of the garden to encourage water to soak into the ground instead of running off. The idea behind such a trench is based on the principles of permaculture and the aims of creating a more sustainable and complete gardening system.

Seedlings of kumanda yvyra’i will eventually grow into a living fence several meters tall. As a nitrogen-fixing legume, the plants will nourish the soil while providing a harvest of edible beans.

Surrounding the garden, I have planted a living fence of kumanda yvyra’i (literally translating from Guaraní as “little bean tree”), a leguminous tree that will reach a few meters high. These will grow fast, add nitrogen to the soil, provide light shade to future plants, and produce beans that can be consumed by humans and animals alike. Also, I have planted on each tablón a cover crop of Canavalia, another nitrogen-fixing plant in the legume family. Unfortunately, I seem to have received bad seed as none has germinated, but one can never be sure that it’s not simply the heat and sun that are preventing proper growth. For now, things are going as smoothly as one might expect in a developing country. As always, I am keeping my fingers crossed for some rain.

—Mario Machado

by Alex Norelli—

Organic Gardening test gardener & fellow OG blogger Andres Mejides shows me his south Florida organic oasis.

When I first stepped foot on the property I noticed the calmness of the air. The wind sweeping across the Redlands that day was diverted above the tops of the trees and on the ground there were warm shadowy pools of placid air. Andres had told me there were five acres of property, but from the density of foliage along the driveway it could have been the edge of the jungle for all I knew. He started off by showing me a specimen of the Chanel No. 5 tree, with its long wild star-bursting petals, where the perfume gets its scent.

Chanel No. 5 flower

Andres then took me through the groves, and showed me some one-year old mamey, about the size of golf balls—still a year off from hearty ripeness. When they’re full-grown they look like hefty sweet-potatoes and taste somewhere between pumpkin and papaya.

He then began telling me about the soil in general, and I asked him if the ground here was the same as much of south Florida, an inch of topsoil on a hundred feet of limestone coral, where trees are planted in pitchfork-dug limestone pits. He said it was but that in the last ten years he’s practiced no-input farming, i.e. he hasn’t added compost in that time. He told me too that conventional farmers in the Redlands have to add iron to the soil. “But do you know why they call it the Redlands?” He asked me. “Its because of the iron!” However, because of conventional farming practices, the microorganisms that make the iron usable by plants are no longer there.

Continuing the tour Andres showed me a trove of tropical trees, everything from lychee, longan, white sapote, black sapote, the monolithic and studded jackfruit, mangos, avocados, and plenty of starfruit…including one nearly 75 years old with a vaulting canopy brimming with fruit.

Beneath the arching canopy you couldn’t tell 30 mile an hour gusts were swirling overhead.

I told him I’d never seen a starfruit so lush with fruit…but then he told the variety is not that tasty, but it came with the property and he keeps it for the beauty of the tree. It was the appreciation of plants not merely for their production that made this place endearing on so many levels. It was a farm that doubled as a museum, a museum that double as a farm.

Interspersed between the groves were a few raised beds where Andres grew everything from carrots, ginger, turmeric and herbs. Along the way he’d pull a leaf from this and that, crush it in his fingers and tell me to smell it. The most memorable was Jamaican mint, which had a scent more rich and aromatic than any I’d ever smelled. There was also a burgundy leafed hibiscus that had leaves you could eat for a jolt of tasty vitamin C. I can’t remember the names of them all, but I do remember seeing a hearty perennial Rosemary, a bush taller than I was. He said he uses the stems as skewers for shish kebabs so the flavor leaches from the stems and into the meat. It sounded delicious and he gave me a few to take home and try.

Rows of carrots and herbs, and in the upper right corner, a pile of downed tree limbs acting as snake habitat.

A little bit further on he showed me a large jackfruit. I’ve never tasted one of these ginormous hedgehog looking fruit, but I hear they taste like Juicy Fruit gum. He said they can grow to 80lbs., which was about as hard for me to imagine as a white whale.

Andres giving perspective to the jackfruit.

Along the way I noticed there were no shortage of orb-weaving spider webs. I walked into a few myself, however instead of my usual feeling of disgust I knew they were a part of a larger plan. Who knows how many pests they sunder, pests that a conventional farmer would “need” to kill using pesticides. Andres told me, that like mantises they eat beneficials and pests alike: “It isn’t up to us to decide for them. They have their own prerogatives, I just edge them into cooperation.”

Well, on his farm these spiders were obviously getting their fill and doing a job, because the farm was jumping with them. I noticed too that there were piles of rotten wood that looked purposefully place along the edges of the property and in the orchards beneath trees.

“Snake habitat,” Andres told me, “We have plenty of coral snakes around here.”

This to me seemed against common sense—why would you encourage the presence of a snake to which the last anti-venom stopped being produced in 2010?

“They’re very hot” Andres told me, giggling a bit at the double-entendre “That’s snake handler’s-talk for ‘venomous’. Really though, they’re the most charming creatures.” And I knew he was serious because I too had heard that of all the poisonous snakes coral snakes were the least confrontational. “They eat rats and snails,” Andres told me, both which harbor some nasty parasites, not to mention feed on greens.

Something about this plant seemed to symbolize Andres’ farm…a central idea with many crisp and insightful tangents branching off, with spaces given for things to happen, allowing plants and organisms to fulfill themselves within his grand scheme.

Winding up the tour he showed me various fish bowls filled with a trifecta of lotus, fish, and algae. Bringing in many forms of life into a farm make it more than just a farm, I thought. This was not a farm in the strictest sense, nor was it just a garden. It was a unique place where production and peace harmonized in the sun-dappled shadows of the trees. And thanks to Andres, and this stunning example, I will have to re-dream what my ideal farm/garden will be.

You can check out Andres’ Year-Round Almanac for growing in Florida here, on the OG website.

by Mario Machado—
I awoke at the earliest of dawn, the hours of the morning that are still indistinguishable from the night except for the flickering of sunlight over a very distant horizon. I left my house and mounted my bike, clipping along the dirt road with my stiff, unwashed hair folding and flipping in the surprisingly cool morning air. As I reached the home of Don Ramón, the town butcher or carnicero, he appeared at the front his wooden hovel. [Editor’s note: “Don” is a title of respect used with a man’s first name; the equivalent for women is “Doña.”] His feet bare on the dirt floor, he smiled and remarked how happy he was that I decided to come.

This Paraguayan milk cow is about the same age (2 to 3 years) and breed as the one killed.

The act of butchering a cow is a process not to be taken lightly or quickly. We began the morning by sipping maté and observing our quarry tied to a tree off in the shadows. He told me about this particular cow and why he decided to purchase it for slaughter. It was a smaller milk cow, about 3 years old, that had not shown any signs of producing milk or young. It had had a nice life wandering the Paraguayan campo, grazing on the thick and abundant vegetation. Now, that which had been fed will feed, and the Don placed his empty cup of maté on the table and disappeared into the house.

Two other men arrived to help us with the process. We approached our prey, Don Ramón standing in the background silently sharpening his knife. One man lassoed a leg, while the other grabbed for the tail. He jerked the tail and spun around the cow’s side, catching the animal off balance and pulling it to the ground. With the cow now on its side, the other man continued to tie up all four legs to the effect that the animal was quickly unable to move. We held the ropes to steady the struggling cow as Don Ramón moved in quickly with a bucket in hand to catch the blood. He was going to cut its throat.

Using a small machete and infinite poise, he leveled the blade to the cow’s neck, located the jugular vein, and plunged through the skin. The cow gave an initial cry of pain and surprise and began to breathe heavily, blowing dust from the front of its nose. It was a lost cause, however, as the blood from the wound flowed freely with a color that I cannot forget in its brilliance of red.

The animal gave one, maybe two other strong efforts of escape before surrendering to the inevitability. Its breathing became more steady as the loss of blood, I am sure, inhibited any more mental function. Its head moved around a bit on the dirt ground, almost as if finding a more comfortable spot upon which to lie. The animal, which moments before was living and breathing, was dead within 3 minutes. The Don made one final cut to the spinal column to rid the animal of any more pain and to ensure its death. The butchering could then begin.

The rest of this process took only an hour or so. As the neighbors began to arrive, the meat was sold as it was cut from the bone. The entire animal was almost gone by 9 a.m. Each and every part of the animal was used (except for the contents of its stomach). The meat was most expensive and sold in small quantities. The intestines and blood were saved for making blood sausage, while the stomach (being the cheapest part of the animal) was used to make mondongo. The head was bought by a family in order to make akágue yvygu’û, a popular Paraguayan dish prepared by wrapping the head in foil and cooking it on coals under a thin layer of dirt. On this day, the entire community, the dogs included (which rarely get a decent meal), got a much-needed dose of protein.

—Mario Machado

by Marygrace Taylor—

I always say that once the holidays end, I’d be more than happy to fast forward through the rest of winter and move straight on to spring. Cold weather and short days aside, for local-minded eaters, January through March offers little culinary variety. Even down here in Austin, the farmers markets are still open, but all that’s really available are leafy greens and root vegetables. Oh, and cauliflower. If there’s one good thing about the dead of winter, roasted cauliflower is probably it. It has a mild, slightly sweet flavor that’s often more appealing to kids (and many adults) than the raw stuff. And when seasoned with a zesty, curry-based dressing, the white winter veggie will warm your family up without weighing them down.

Warm Curried Cauliflower with Chickpeas and Cashews
This recipe only calls for a tablespoon of curry powder, which will help introduce kids to the flavor without overwhelming them. If you regularly cook with the spice mixture, feel free to add up to 2 tablespoons.

Active time: 10 minutes
Total time: 30 minutes

1 medium head cauliflower, chopped into florets
½ medium red onion, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons safflower oil
¼ cup coconut oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon curry powder (or more, if desired)
2 teaspoons brown sugar
¼ teaspoon turmeric
1 cup cooked chickpeas (canned are fine)
1/3 cup cashews, toasted and coarsely chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 400°.
2. On a baking sheet, toss the cauliflower and onion with the safflower oil and a big pinch of salt. Roast for 15 to 20 minutes, tossing once or twice, until the edges of the cauliflower are golden brown.
3. In a small skillet, warm the coconut oil over medium heat. Add the garlic, curry powder, sugar, turmeric, and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the mixture is fragrant and the garlic begins to brown, about 1 minute. Remove from the heat and set aside.
4. Place the roasted cauliflower and onion in a large bowl and add the chickpeas and cashews. Drizzle the spiced coconut oil over top and toss until well mixed. Taste for seasoning and serve warm.

Serves 4
Per serving: calories 326, fat 22 g, protein 8 g, carbohydrates 30 g, dietary fiber 7 g

by Alex Norelli—

Mamey Sapote

Sapote are an exceptionally imaginative group of fruit, especially since their complex sweet and colorful interiors are often hidden behind a deceptive epidermis. Like weather-beaten treasure chests holding pirate’s booty, sapote promise a treat for those who dig inside. While all sapote are not directly related, they do share the overarching characteristic of having delicious flesh hidden beneath a callous exterior, and have their origins in Central America. When I first encountered them at a farmer’s market in southern Florida they were seriously upstaged by bundles of fiery orange carrots, heady plumes of crisp emerald lettuces, and celestial mounds of golden star fruit. But next to such visible palates of color, they came to stand out for not immediately catching my eye.

When it comes to an apple, peach, or pear I feel like they look as good as they taste—though sometimes they do taste better, i.e. Bosc pears. However, it is only once sapote are halved to expose a ripe custardy flesh that they exemplify the saying: “Its what’s inside that counts.” Their flavors are evocative and expansive, to the point where each new tasting evokes new descriptors for the flavor. And while the fruit of this group are most often eaten as desserts, they are not merely chosen as a healthy alternative to ice cream or flan—They are good enough on their own, with just the right level of sweetness that serving them for dessert will not be met with a shrug of lost indulgence.

What follows are four sapote that happen to be available now in Southern Florida, Central America, though rarely, if ever, in a store near you.

**
Black Sapote, the dark delicacy

the chocolate-pudding fruit

The Black Sapote is an intriguing fruit, on the tree it looks like a very under-ripe persimmon, green and hard as a melon to touch. That is, before it has been picked green and allowed to cure, ripening until it looks a couple days from outright rotten. It’s then that it’s at its edible zenith: before then, just as with the related persimmons, the flavor is a tongue-puckering astringent.

Maybe it’s this over-ripened appearance that keeps it from being more well known outside of Florida and Central America. Once you do eventually try one, tasting the  dark buttery flesh—a malty sweetness not far from molasses, not far from chocolate—will expand into an ethereal realm where you try and grasp for other ways to explain this bewitching fruit (note: to me all fruits are bewitching, but this one especially). Coincidentally it is also know as ‘the chocolate pudding fruit’ and from the first bite you will taste the reasoning. The pulp of this fruit, if blended and presented as chocolate pudding, would fool more than a handful of people.

Additionally, for locavores this fruit may satisfy your urge for chocolate without coming from another continent. Vegans should take note of black sapote because it is a chocolate pudding alternative with very little processing needed. While most of the recipes I’ve uncovered for it have revolved around milkshakes and desserts, I have begun thinking of other applications. It could be spread on toast, like an apple butter, or made into muffins or bread. Now that I think of it, this fruit tastes a lot like Shoe-Fly Pie, and I’m tempted to make a black sapote pie using my pumpkin pie recipe and see how the maltiness interacts with the nutmeg, clove and ginger. And I bet with the addition of certain spices you could have a delicious molé of sorts.

**
Canistel, or Eggfruit.

Of the four sapote here described, this one is by far the most outwardly appealing. Its yellow is as familiar as that of a New York City Taxi cab, however its texture is far more foreign—when it comes to fruit anyway. The first bite is floral, almost like a zucchini flower while the texture is like that of a hardboiled egg yolk.

But where as you might ditch a yolk to avoid the cholesterol, this yellow you savor. Its dry sweetness spirals through the senses, and of all the sapote here described, this is by far the most indescribable in flavor. Reminiscent of acorn squash or pumpkin pie, similarly loaded with vitamin A, this fruit is as much a dessert for its flavor as its color. This would be a great substitute for pumpkin in a pie recipe and because of its natural sweetness you could cut back on any added sugar.

**
Sapodilla

Originally this little fruit, similar looking, though less fuzzy than a kiwi, was harvested for a different thing, its sap. If you scratch the unripened fruit it will ooze driblets of gummy white that becomes increasingly tacky when exposed to air. The name of this is chiclé and it was used in the first chewing gums, like Chiclets. Even now some chewing gums still use this natural latex, as opposed to the vinyl of manufactured gum.

The fruit itself is the smallest of this sapote quartet, looking something like a russeted goose egg. Its flavor is of a pear steeped in the maltiness of sugar-cane, with a roasted nut aftertaste.

**
Mamey Sapote

This one is quite something, and if you are a fan of sweet potato, pumpkin or papaya you will find this insatiable. Though if it were a beauty contest, mamey would certainly have only its hidden talents going for it. About as rough looking as elephant skin, anywhere from oval to oblong, this fruit is about as visually unfruitlike as they come. It looks more like a stone pestle or muddy potato.

Yet if you cut it longwise and carefully ply the two halves, you will see a large glossy almond-shaped seed of sculptural elegance surrounded by blushing glossy flesh the color of clouds burnt orange by the setting sun. This color tells you it is rich in vitamins and flavor, and its flavor tells you you’ve made the right choice. This fruit has enough firmness that it can be cubed and add it to a fruit salad, and similar to papaya, it tastes awesome when doused in lime.

**

These fruit truly are reminders to not judge a fruit by its cover. Similarly, how many fruit—from cantaloupes to figs, avocados to squashes in general—prove that digging deeper is sweeter than mulling about the outside?

Feel free to post sapote recipes for this quartet of curious fruit.