One day's harvest - cherry tomatoes, aji dulce peppers (freeze well), orange flower seeds, carambola and 4 cucumbers (not shown).
I had tried a carambola before it was really ripe and didn't like it. For plain eating I still don't like them, but have found some really really good ways to use them that make them a favorite fruit now. The first thing I made was a chutney out of carambola and walnuts, onions and all the normal chutney spices. This fruit holds up without getting mushy when cooked.
This is prior to cooking - I marinated small sanitized (all bongy bits removed) chicken pieces, cebollo, garlic, culantro, almonds, aji dulce and carambola chunks in fresh lime juice and olive oil (a lemon and lime trees are a must). Then I baked the thing and it was flavorful and the carambola held up really well and was a nice slightly sweet taste with slight citrus flavor. It looked pretty much the same cooked. Very nice. Next time I will add some cucumber and lemon grass. Lemon grass is awesome. Just slicing it up and marinating small meat pieces in it makes a delicious meal.
I had a hankering for chocolate lava cakes and I found heavy cream to whip. Carambola was a nice addition.
One of our cats was just sitting and staring at night at this pot. No hand waving or poking, no forward/backward moving or pouncing. What's up? At first I didn't see it.
Then it was "holy shit."
Touching it got it on the move.
Definitely a Tuca (kitten) eater - hide all the babies! Beautiful and really cool thing to find.
