Garden Goodies

One of my favorite things about living in Brazil is that fruit and vegetables are very abundant and the friendly culture means people are happy to share whatever is popping up in their backyard at the time. Just this week, we received a bag full of clementines, lemons, a giant avocado, a container full of polenta (ok not from the garden, but from a student's kitchen), and a box full of tomatoes....



There's even more here, outside, ripening in the sun a little....

After making salsa and still having tons left, I found a recipe for homemade marinara sauce that I'm going to give a try one evening.

Another really fun thing we received (that actually cost a small price since this family does it as a way to make a little extra cash) is this 2 liter bottle of honey! One of Asas's more adventurous missionary couple has boxes for bees to make honey and harvests it by the bottle full! Talk about an interesting activity to do as a couple to keep your marriage SWEET :)

I've already made some muffins where I substituted honey for the sugar and they were terrific. What else would you do with 2 liters of honey?

Meanwhile, here's our garden situation...

While we were in Boa Vista ants came and took away almost every leaf from every plant in our yard! It was difficult to imagine how many ants this could have been, until the night after we were home we caught them in the act of taking the remains of the loot! I kid you not....there were probably over 10,000 ants swarming our yard leading a THICK parade of ants from a hole in the ground 3 houses away! Some ants were cutting leaves and creating a pile in the driveway, and another group was carrying off the leaves! We sprayed the hole and they left the next day, but it took 2 weeks for our garden to show signs of life again.

Finally, this pretty, yellow bush is growing some leaves back! We hope the rest of the yard will come back to life with a little TLC!