Where Wonder Meets Wander

Wild Apples that taste like roses. As part of my wild food adventure, I picked a handful of these flowery tasting apples called agua de manzana or water apples or my favorite name rose apples  and I turned them into homemade applesauce. Hot applesauce. not spicy hot, apple-pie-just-out-of-the-oven hot. So I added some cinnamon and a little honey to a pot of sliced rose apples and cooked with a little added water until everything was hot and bubbly and the apples were soft and pink. The color from the skins made it all very pretty. Then I served this super easy homemade water apple applesauce as a side to lunch. Yum! So what are rose apples good for? detoxify the liver improve digestion protect against  diabetes improve the immune system lower cholesterol prevent certain types of  cancers   eliminate fungal and bacterial infections reduce  fever even halt epileptic seizures. AMAZING! And they really do taste like roses when you ...

It felt like I was entering the Amazon. Not a soul was to be seen. Great swaths of bamboo fell into the water at the river's edge and wild mangoes towered overhead. But for the hum of our motor, the world was silent. There are many places the tourists visit in Bocas, this is not one of them. I did hear there is a mna they call Santa who lives along the river's edge in a home built by his own hands. I hear he has a long beard. I watched as we rounded corners of dark water until his house finally came into view. I saw his hollowed out canoes, but I did not see him sitting in the lawn chair sitting among the coconut palms down by the water. I know there are crocodiles, very big ones, in some of the rivers that run from the mountains down into the sea. I wondered if one might be lurking beneath me. A middle aged man and his aging mother came into view. He paddled their cayuko. She held an umbrella in her wrinkled hand. They said nothing as they passed. He smiled, but did not ...

I saw a clip on the news today that cut me to the heart. It was about a war torn city in Syria where 250,000 people have been cut off from supply lines. a woman and 4 children were living in destitute apartment, but they had plastic containers with vegetables growing in them. Thank God for the woman's forethought. It was all they had to eat. Here in Panama most people have stopped growing their own food. A generation ago almost every family had a garden. Now they go to the store to buy their food. And most of the time they don't even buy fruits and vegetables. They buy rice and sugar. Of course they need jobs to have money to buy food. And jobs are scarce. Things shift and society grows. People want to embrace new technology and the modern world. But in the process they are starving. So we are planting a garden. And the locals are stopping on their way by to look at it. This is Eric, he and his friends were curious about what we were doing, so we invited them to h...

Biriba is now officially my favorite fruit in the whole world! It tastes like vanilla custard. Officially known as rollinia delisoca, its also called wild sugar apple in some places. I have two biriba trees growing in my yard and I patiently watched the first fruit grow into the size of a small watermelon and then turn bright yellow. When I popped the first bite into my moth, I had one of those, shut-out-the-world-and-enjoy-this moments. How could something growing wild taste so delicious? Good for you? YES! Biriba is high in iron, potassium, and vitamin C. But more importantly to me, it's an all natural stimulant, similar to coffee or raw chocolate. In other words... Biriba is a feel good fruit! So my plan is to dry the seeds and see just how many biriba trees I can grow. They are considered extremely rare. Well, I will fancy myself a modern day Johnny Appleseed and plant wild sugar apples where ever I go! Exploring the Possibilities, laura Please check out...

We lost a young man. His name was Ubaldino and he was 20. He was an orhpan who was left on the streets when he was about 12 with a 2 year old brother to care for. And he had a terrible skin disease. It is so hard to understand why some are born into this world to undergo such suffering. Ubaldino could not work because his condition. He knew he could not have a girl friend, which is heartbreaking to me, to think that you could never know that basic kind of love. We bought zinc for the roof of his house. before that, the rain poured in. We bought blankets and pillows for his bed because he had none. We bought clothing for him and for his little brother and food for their table. But it wasn't enough. This is difficult for me. I cared for a young man that no one would hug because of the way he looked. He came running across the street to me yelling, Mommy! everytime he was me. Sometimes I was frustrated with him because he wanted money to out minutes on his cell phone and I ...