Mato pics

Here are this week's best pics....

A weekend at the beach

 

Thanks to a last minute cancellation we had the weekend to ourselves. Now don't get me wrong it's great to have guests, but it's also nice to have some time off every now and then! We headed off to the south coast to visit Mato's cousin and partner in crime Meisi, for some sand-castle building and boogie boarding.

Paddlers

The simple joys of owning a paddling pool!

Christophene

I'm super excited to have discovered a 'new' vegetable in these last few months, it's called a christophene or chouchotte. It looks slightly weird, but is very versatile, it has a taste and texture a bit like a mild radish, though it has funny spiky skin and an almond-like stone. To be honest I had actually seen it for sale here before, but I'd just steered clear of it. But I've been reading a few Caribbean cookbooks, and most recently Ann Vanderhoof's An Embarrassment of Mangoes (about a couple who take a career break to cruise around the Caribbean in a yacht), it's filled with great travel tales and delicious anecdotes and recipes. I've long looked to
Caribbean cuisine to inspire my dishes for the guesthouse, a lot of the same vegetables grow here and there, though we lack the diversity of spices, peppers and chilies, sadly! Anyway I use the christophene in salads to give crunch, but it can also be cooked in a gratin, stuffed or added to stews and curries, it's just another thing to add to my backup list, for the days when I'm tearing my hair out to find vegetables here......