Make a soursop daiquiri for christmas - here is the recipe

Prepare the fruit to get the juice
The soursop should be avocado soft but not squishy. Hold the fruit with one hand and peel away the skin with other hand. Once you have removed as much skin as possible, break the ripe fruit open, and remove the core and the flesh with your hands. Place the flesh in a mouli or a sieve and push the fruit through the mesh so that the seeds and pulp are left behind and the juice is collected underneath.

The cocktail ingredients
60 ml juice, as prepared above
45 ml bacardi rum
15 ml white curacao
5-8 ice cubes
a maraschino cherry for decoration

Method
Place all ingregients in a blender and blend until smooth, pour into a large cocktail galss and decorate with cherry. Yum!

Soursop Juice

We are currently researching a new product to add to our jams - soursop juice. We have received many requests for fresh soursop and juice from people looking for the fruit as a medication against cancer. Research has shown that the fruit, the bark and the leaves all have medicinal properties and anti-oxidants which have shown promise against cancer cells.

It is very difficult to send fresh soursop to the market as it is very perishable. It is also difficult to preserve the juice without adding sugar. We have imported a large pressure cooker from the US and completed a trial batch of bottling the juice and then heating it to extremely high temperatures to kill the bacteria. We are still testing the product to determine its USE BY date, but it appears to be at least a couple of months.

Hopefully this product may meet some of the requests we receive.

Tourism Award Winner

This year we decided to enter the Tourism Tropical North Queensland Tourism Awards in the categories Hosted Accommodation and Ecotourism. We were finalists in both sections but did not win either section. Instead we received the Judges Commendation Award. It was a lot of work to write the 30 page applications, host the judges on the farm, and attend two interviews, and it made us really think about our business and our achievements over the last year. We appreciate the judges recognising our efforts and commending us. It was good to get dressed up and have a great night out meeting everyone from the tourism industry

Congrats to Winners who were also from the Daintree:
Tourist Attraction - Daintree Discovery Centre
Ecotourism - Jungle Surfing
Hosted Accommodation - Red Mill House

Breakfast fruit platter in October

 

From left the fruit is soursop, solo papaya with lime, star apple, mangosteen, sugar bananas - this is part of our breakfast which is served to our guests on the verandah of their cottage each morning

Ugrade completed of our self-guided walk

Time for a celebration, after a full week working to upgrade the walking trail in our forest, and replace lost markers. Here are some of the local characters who joined us to celebrate with a glass of champagne - on the trail of course. Many thanks to our wwoofa - anna who did all the hard work, and took this photo.

Visit by spanish celebrity chef

Yesterday I had Miguel Maestre and a three man film crew roaming around in my orchard and vegetable garden filming miguel 'discovering' fruit on the trees, cutting it open and tasting it in front of the camera.

This is part of a television series - 13 episodes called Tropical Kitchen. The show has already been bought by the lifestyle channel to screen in australia next year.I must say that I was a bit apprehensive - with two days notice - but we were able to set up filming opps for soursop, star apple and jaboticaba. Miguel was also thrilled with the kaffir limes and the leaves which he said tasted hundred times better than the ones he can buy in Sydney. We missed the actual cooking of the recipe - the boys took the ingregients and ran to film some rainforest shots before it got too dark.

Miguel reminded me of Jamie Oliver - with all the boyish enthusiasm for food and flavours. But he also had very strong charisma and it was great fun watching him perform for the camera. He tried to herd my chickens into the screen shot but they werent cooperating,

For more info about Miguel I found this on the internet

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Stinging tree surprise

Three weeks ago I was weeding the path behind the back door, and was stung by a stinging tree. This came as a complete surprise - my first time - and this was the last place you would expect to find a stinging tree. It was masquerading as a weed amongst a few other interlopers on the stone pathway. I pulled it out with great gusto and it stung me hard - both on the back of the fingers and on the palm - and I dropped it quickly.The seedling was only about 10cm high and had 4 leaves, but a close up look showed all the fine needlelike hairs that cause the pain. A bird must have dropped the seed on a fly-by.


This was my first sting. It had taken 20 years of living here to have this experience. There was immediate intense pain, and it continued for a few hours. When I tried to wash my hands, the water wetting the hand made the pain even more intense. For three days it was really bad - you were aware of it all the time. Then it gradually disappeared, until you wet your hands.

Now three weeks later I can say I have survived, and there are only minor twinges - a gentle reminder when I wet my hands.