The wonders of Splenda

On Wednesday, Tom drove Salvadorian Marta and her two pre-school sons, Eduardo and Giovanni, into San Ignacio. He parked the truck, and Marta and the boys went off to do their errands, and Tom did what he had to do. He talked to the real estate agent who had gone with us to look at the properties in Dangriga, and told her that we had an accepted offer on another property. He stopped at Noah’s office, and found that Noah was in Belize City doing the legwork for our purchase, which is expected to go through in the next week to ten days, although Noah isn’t sure since Century 21, the seller’s agent, is doing most of the paperwork. He bought some produce at the San Ignacio market, went to the Coke/Belikin/Crystal distributor for beer and water, and took Marta and the boys out to lunch at Maxim’s Chinese restaurant, which has a $4BZ ($2US) special of fried chicken and French fries (big spender!).

While Tom was out, I started stripping the paneling out of the second cabin. I found a few more lizards, which I didn’t kill because they weren’t threatening me, and Tom said the termite spray will either kill them or drive them out. I also pulled one panel down, and found what looked like a deflated bag attached to the inside of the siding, with the mouth of the bag pushed out between two of the outside boards. I noticed small bees buzzing around it, so I went to the other cabin, got the wasp and hornet killer, and gave them a good zap. I gave them a few minutes to either calm down or die, and went back to pulling the paneling. As I slammed the head of the crowbar into the next panel to pull it down, the hole and the crowbar started dripping with honey. The little bees had filled the entire space between two of the studs with a big dripping honeycomb. I was really bummed that I’d zapped them with poison, although when Tom came home he pointed out that I would have no idea how to get the honey out of the comb without either getting stung or ruining it anyway.

I pulled down another wall and a half, and stopped for my lunch break, which was a bowl of rice and beans the neighbors had brought over the evening before. Just as I was finishing the rice and beans, Ofelia came walking up the driveway with a plate full of fresh fry jacks. Since we didn’t have any beans, I grabbed a jar of jelly, and Ofelia and I sat in the shade drinking sour orangeade and eating fry jacks. Ofelia and I had planned to bake on Friday, but since she was out of work early, we decided to make lemon bars. As we were picking the lemons, her mother, the other Marta, came up the driveway with 2 ½ year old Sulmi. The four of us went in the camper and started making the lemon bars just as Tom got home. He passed in the groceries and went to finish stripping the paneling out of the cabin, and remarked later that he can tell we’re going to stay here, because it’s just like home – my kitchen is already becoming a social center, and the neighbors have already decided that I’m far too thin, and are doing their best to put some meat on me by bringing me food and getting me to cook yummy fattening things!

The whole issue about weight here is interesting. Between being physically active cleaning up around here and eating lots and lots of produce with less meat, starch, and alcohol than we did in NY, Tom and I are both losing a little weight and are looking and feeling pretty fit. The Belizean people seem to tend to move a little slower than we do, and their diets consist of lots of rice and flour tortillas, so while none of the people around here are obese by any means and we see far fewer overweight people here than in the US, most seem to have a very healthy layer of padding. They bring me food to make me gain weight, and then ask how I stay so thin. Ofelia, who is 18, very attractive, and a very healthy weight, told me she wants a flat stomach like mine. I told her that her weight was healthier than my weight, and that my doctor had told me to try not to lose weight, but she has still somehow decided that she wants what I thought was only the American ideal of super-thin. She and Marta (her mother) and I were talking about how people diet in the US, and I jumped on my soapbox and whipped out my bag of Splenda, which I use because it dissolves better than sugar in drinks (especially lemon, lime, and sour orange ades!), and explained how – in my opinion – Americans spend too much money on things like Splenda, thinking that if they use that instead of sugar when they bake, they’ll automatically get skinny even though their baked goods are still full of butter, eggs, and flour. They were fascinated with the Splenda because it looked and tasted like sugar, but the bulk equivalent to a five pound bag of sugar weighs less than 10 ounces. Since they don’t have television and aren’t overexposed to the American media, they’d never even heard of it, much less seen it. Fortunately we’d already mixed up the lemon bars with real sugar, so I didn’t have to do any more soapbox stomping about not using Splenda in the lemon bars.

After Marta, Sulmi, and Ofelia left with the still cooling lemon bars, I went into the second cabin to help Tom finish stripping out the paneling. Only one small section remained on one wall, so I decided to show Tom my technique of ramming the hooked end of the crowbar into the paneling and pulling it off, popping the nails like snaps. It worked great, and he was very impressed, especially because as I yanked the piece down, it game down faster than expected and the edge whacked me in the face. I now have a skinned forehead and look like I’ve been shot between the eyes, although luckily it was a little high so my nose wasn’t broken, and I didn’t end up with any black eyes or need stitches. I’m not even going to try to explain to anybody what happened.

Talking with Ofelia, I found out a few more details on Esmerelda, the resident horse. They’re not entirely sure she’s in foal, because the breeding was a little bit dodgy. It seems that one of the neighboring resorts has a thoroughbred stallion that George likes. So, one day when the guides from the resort had a group out for a trail ride, George got on the grey mare (who now can be ridden, it seems), joined up with the ride, and followed the horses home. Somehow he managed to get the mare turned out with the stallion. Ofelia wasn’t sure when this happened, but her story was enough to tell me that I don’t want to march up to the resort and ask to see the stallion because I’m thinking about buying a mare who is in foal to him. Ofelia and Marta say the stallion is very big, although I’m not sure what the standards for “big horse” are around here. In any case, if the mare is in foal to a TB, it makes her that much more attractive to us, since we’d actually talked about finding a Belizean mare that we like and getting some TB semen shipped to us so we could do an AI breeding. From what we’ve heard, first generation TBs don’t tend to do too well here, but if they’re bred to a Belizean horse, the offspring do fine. We may go look at the horses at the resort anyway, and we’ll definitely go to a few of the other stables around here and see what’s available. George wants more than the $400BZ we know we need to spend, but if she really is in foal to a nice TB, his $700BZ price tag isn’t too unreasonable – and Tom, ever the wheeler-dealer, is talking about giving him $400BZ upfront for the mare, and the other $300BZ when the foal is on the ground, which would be very fair for both of us, we think.