Lizard, My Lizard

Anolis carolinensis
www.distinctlyflorida.com

Lizards! They are just so cool with their push-ups and throat fans and pugnacious attitude. Leaping lizards, battling lizards, lazy lies a lizard soaking up the sunshine. 

Did you play with them as a child? I did. I let them bite my earlobes and they dangled like living jewels. I turned them on their backs and "sang them to sleep". As an adult, I tossed palmetto bugs to them while gardening. I occasionally stumbled across them at their most intimate moments, then felt compelled to apologize and turn away. Even a lizard deserves a little privacy.

I'm not a lizard snob. I like the brown anole even though it is not native to Florida; and the curly tailed lizards are adorable and so brazen. But the green anole will always be first in my heart. His motions are smooth and slow and his green is so happy and bright. In moments of distress, he turns the brown of old leaves, his rib cage fans in and out with his heightened agitation and he will stiffen and extend his throat fan in defiance. 

Lizards are champion climbers. Their acrobatic leaps are worthy of Cirque du Soliel. I once saw a lizard leap through the air, nab a dragonfly and land a little precariously on an adjacent shrub. How did he manage to eat that whole thing? Amazing.

They don't always make the best choices and I remember one morning, on my drive to work, I was startled to see a lizard holding on for dear life to the wiper blade of my car; the wind buffeted him and he closed his eyes as though he was thinking, "Oh, good Lord, save me from this nightmare." I couldn't stop. I was on the expressway and I had a class to teach. He crawled out of my view and I don't know if he found shelter or was swept away to his death. This shook me up so badly that I called my husband, distraught and nearly in tears. Silly, I know, but my husband understands me and later when I went out to my car to drive home, I found he'd left me a note... Ode to a Lizard... written on the back of his business card and clamped under the same wiper blade.

The young ones will sometimes sneak into my house and I will later find their desiccated bodies and try not to think of how they'd suffered. I stopped spraying completely. I can live with a few bugs and I let the lizards take care of them. I feel as though I'm blurring the line between indoors and outside but this seems a very Florida thing to do. If a guest sees a palmetto bug, I break out the fly swatter. I'm not as fast as a lizard, but I get the job done.  

For all their charm and antics, I have chosen to honor the lizard with some Distinctly Florida products and to share some stories. I hope you will join me in expressing your love for lizards.

Green Anole Pottery 

Green Anole Pottery

Pudding, You Say? Cocoplummy Yummy!

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Cocoplum Pudding

  As experiments go, I'm going to rate this one a success. I've never made a steamed pudding before and I had to improvise the recipe because there are none specifically for cocoplums. I pulled out my mother's old WOMAN'S HOME COMPANION COOK BOOK and used the recipe for steamed cherry pudding with some modifications. The resulting pudding was dense, moist and mildly berry flavored. I melted some of my cocoplum jelly as a sauce and the contrast was wonderful. This pudding is not too sweet and will remind you of a bread pudding. Feel free to tinker with the recipe, as this was a first attempt and there are many variations to pump up the impact. You could change the spices, add almonds or the cocoplum seeds (I would recommend removing the fibrous skins), add raisins or coconut, use a nice liqueur in your sauce... Be creative! And please feel free to share any variations you create. I am only offering a starting point.

 Here is the recipe:

2 cups cooked cocoplum pulp 

2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/8 teaspoon cloves

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/3 cup butter

2/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cup milk

  Cream the butter; add the sugar gradually and cream together. Add egg and vanilla until blended. Mix in salt, baking powder, cinnamon and cloves. Once these are well blended, stir in the cocoplum pulp. Lastly, add the flour and milk, alternating a bit at a time and stirring only enough to blend thoroughly. 

  Pour the batter into a greased and sugared 2 quart mold and cover with a cloth tied securely. (This is done to protect the batter from dripping steam.)

  You can use individual molds if you like and these will take less time to steam--30 minutes or so.

  The large mold will take about 2.5 hours if you steam it in a large covered pot with about 1" of water in the bottom and a rack to put the mold on, or you can use a pressure cooker and reduce the time to about 80 minutes. I used the pot because my mold was too big for my pressure cooker.

  Once the pudding is done, remove it from the steamer and allow to set for a few minutes before you un-mold it. I removed the cloth and put a plate over the mold and just flipped it over. (The pudding did not come free immediately so I just left it and went to play spider solitaire.) When I came back, it had fallen onto the plate and was perfect! How often does that happen? I was delighted.

  To make the sauce, mix 1/2 cup sugar with one tablespoon cornstarch in a saucepan. Stir in 1 cup cocoplum juice and bring to a boil. Boil until thickened. If you like it a little tart you can stir in one tablespoon of lemon juice. This sauce can be used over pancakes, too.

  Cocoplum pulp: Wash about 200 cocoplums and put them in a pot with enough water to cover and two cinnamon sticks. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer for about and hour or longer, until the plums are soft. Allow the plums to cool and then squeeze to remove the pits. (Set the pits aside to be later shelled and eaten or made into  brittle or butter.)

  Drain the pulp of liquid through a cheese cloth by squeezing GENTLY. Do not squeeze out all the juice. 

  The juice can be used to make jelly, sauce or hard candy (future posts). 

Bon Appetit!

The Native Gourmet Treat in Your Front Yard

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Native Gourmet

Gracing parking lots and suburban yards is a gourmet delight so secret that you’ll swear it’s a conspiracy. Birds and squirrels know this hidden treasure but they’ll never tell. One online reference on how to tap into the succulent treat comes from a relatively unknown cay in Belize. Few Floridians have ever tasted its subtle sweetness and many don’t even know it can be eaten. This native south Florida shrub requires no special care, will flower on and off throughout the year and if left to grow into a small tree it will reward you with bountiful fruits. You can even crack open the six-segment central shell to get at the tasty nut (really a seed). Many will tell you the fruit will make a delicious jelly or jam, but try to find someone who has actually done it. What is this mysterious plant? The surprising answer is Chrysobalanus icaco, also known as cocoplum.

The fresh fruit can range from the size of a ping pong ball to as small as an olive and has a slightly sweet, mild flavor. The interior nut is pistachio-sized and is sometimes described as tasting like an almond, coconut, or peanut. The real magic happens when you cook the fruit with a little water and some cinnamon sticks. (The flavor resembles a really rich, deep grape with a berry finish.) The resulting juice can then be turned into dessert sauce, jam, jelly, candy, liqueur, brittle or even ice cream.

To make the jam, you will need at least 200 cocoplums. You can find them in city parks, along roadsides, in parking lots - any place the plants haven't been pruned too severely. The only caveat is to pick places where you are sure no pesticides have been used. (I usually go by the presence of insect life.) They are common in the wild and if you are out that way and not on a state preserve or national wildlife refuge, you can collect them there, too.

Wash the plums well and place in a pot with enough water to cover and two cinnamon sticks. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 1.5 hours. You may need to add water, so check on it every now and then. Soon your kitchen with fill with a heavenly aroma - your first hint at the delicacy to come.

Once the liquid is a dark purple and the fruits are soft, remove the pot from the heat and allow to cool. You will be separating the meager pulp from the nut for the next stage. I imagine there are machines that can separate the pulp from the pit, but I don't own one so I put on some clean gloves and squeezed the nuts free. This took a little while. The nuts are tasty on their own so I put them aside to dry.

As you can see, the nut is in a segmented shell. This opens easily by pinching along the seams. The shell is in six segments, which I found fascinating. They are about the size of pistachios. Here is what the nut meat looks like:

I tried roasting the nuts but I like them better not roasted.

The yield was about two cups of pulp. I used the recipe for quick & easy freezer jam and followed the directions described for strawberries since cocoplums are not a well-known fruit. I stirred in one cup brown sugar and 3 cups white (mostly because I ran out of brown sugar). Stir the sugar into the fruit pulp and let sit for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. While that is blending, add one box of pectin (1.75 oz) and 3/4 cup of water in a small pot and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil for one minute. My pot wanted to boil over so I had to stir pretty fast and really reduce the heat. Once this is done, add the pectin liquid to the pulp/sugar mixture and stir until most of the crystals are melted. I heated the mixture a little but I'm not sure that was necessary. It should take about 3 minutes or so until it is smooth and not grainy. Pour the jam into clean, sterile containers and leave about a 1/2 inch gap at the top for expansion if you plan to freeze it. Cap them. (These are screw on lids.)

 Let it sit out for 24 hours and then refrigerate or freeze. It will keep in the refrigerator for about 3 weeks and in the freezer for about a year. I gave a lot of mine away to neighbors because I want to promote this yummy treat. You can use this jam in so many ways. Use it over meats, on desserts (it is great over key lime pie), on brie or goat cheese. Use it in vinaigrettes. Chop the nuts and stir them into the jam for a yummy conserve. Let your imagination soar. This is a dooryard fruit that needs to be explored.

Bon Appetit!

Other ideas:

If Clothes Make the Man…

Certain clothes make us feel a certain way and we behave differently depending on what we wear. When I wear work boots, I want to work and I definitely don’t want to hike Hickory Hammock in high heels. So this idea got me thinking… Does how we decorate our home affect how we feel about ourselves and our environment?

Take a minute and look around your house. Does it reflect what’s important to you, who you are and where you’d like to be?

When I looked around my house, as much as I love Florida, there was very little that represented my state. I had some books about Florida and a couple Seminole Indian dolls. That was pretty much it. Even my garden was comprised of maybe five or six native plants. I actually had more things from England than I did Florida. Why didn’t my home better reflect the Florida I love? 

Thus began my search. I went to home goods stores hunting for Florida accessories. It was frustrating. A typical conversation went something like this…

“May I help you?” the friendly sales woman asked.

“Yes. I’m looking for some Florida accessories for my home.”

A momentary blank look was followed by, “Oh, you mean like palm trees and shells,” she said, brightly.

“Well, is that all you have?”

“I think we might have some alligators, flamingos and maybe some dolphins.”

“Do you have anything distinctly Florida, like our orchids or some of our butterflies?”

She showed me some pillows with butterflies that only exist in someone’s imagination. The orchids are also of types not found in Florida. There are about 250 orchids native to the United State and about 50% of those are found in Florida; some are only found in Florida. The American Orchid Society is even based in Florida. As beautiful and important as orchids are, we have very few accessories with them. You have a much better chance of seeing a pillow with a lilac bloom, a lily of the valley, a tulip or a rose.

“Nothing with ghost orchids?”

“What?”

In general, you will find only those things which can be found in many other states: hibiscus flowers, shells, herons, pelicans, sea turtles, sand dollars. As full of exotic, beautiful, unique species as Florida is, it has been mostly ignored by the designers.  That was about to change.

When I told my former boss that I was going to launch a home accessories business to promote the unique beauty, history and culture of Florida, he said, “Nobody cares about Florida, Julie.”

I’m betting he was wrong.