Of Roosters and Little Potatoes

This fine fellow was strutting up the citrus hill to the upper end of the lawn area one morning doing the ur ur ur ur urrrrr thing. Our fraidy cat "Little Boy" went to the screen and growled a primeval growl at him. Sometimes the chickens and roosters stroll up into our area to give us the wake up call. There are thousands it seems around the hills and valleys and we hear them all at dawn, dusk and when a cloud rolls past and it gets dark. The leader of all commotion is down the hill from us and when he starts up every one else answers. They sound like babies, or witches or just weird cries. Makes for some odd dreams.

These lovely looking things are breadfruit. The one on the left is a regular breadfruit that can be cooked a variety of ways depending on the ripeness (pudding and cakes for the ripe ones and frying as a potato-like fry). The one on the right is a "seed" pan, or a semilla de gran. It is a very spiky green basketball that turns slightly yellow to brown when ready to harvest. You will hurt your fingers pressing on unripe ones, but there is a smuushy give to the ripe ones. The fun begins with tearing it open and fingering out the seeds that look like chesnuts. They are hard seeds embedded in a spongy, sticky goo. You rinse them and boil them in salt water, take off the outer skin and toss them with salt. They are like little baked potatoes! The neighbor lady told me how to cook them. She doesn't speak english and my spanish is crappy but I caught the main verb "hervir" so I knew to boil them. If she hadn't shown me how to get the seeds out I never in a million years would have looked in there or thought anything in there was edible. Very tasty! Most of the fruit here has spikes and looks bizarre. More later about that. Look forward to a few photos of the stingy stuff in the next post...I've got pan grans to eat!