Our cashew plantation is looking good. Our plants are growing well and some trees are already bearing some fruit. I think next year we will be in business and hopefully we can become one of the top supplier of cashew nuts in the Philippines in the future.

                                                       This is how cashew fruits and nuts look like when it’s ready to be harvested.

Cashew nuts are very popular snack but there are many uses for cashew like the cashew apple (fruit) when mashed can be turned into wine. And the young leaves can be used in salads as well.

I am sure it would be lots of fun to experiment I’ll keep you posted.

Look what we harvested from our vegetable garden! 5 kilos of eggplants. It’s such a nice feeling to harvest from what you have sowed.

You might be wondering how I did it with a little munchkin to take care of and a household to run, well I didn’t do it all by myself, my garden angel  Jelly helped me with planting it. She has helped me with collecting plants that I want and planting them since I don’t have much time yet.

What do we do with so much eggplants anyway? Well we make eggplant salad, eggplant omelet (tortang talong) sometimes I mix it with ginisang munngo too. What I haven’t tried is eggplant tempura, I think I am gonna do that this week. I’ll post these eggplant recipes on my food blog soon.

When we have too much, my garden angel brings it to the village market to sell. Lots of the villagers love our eggplants and sometimes it’s gone even before it reaches the market . I think we’ll add more plants in a few months to keep up with the demand.

The tomatoes I planted are now gone. They only bear fruits once but I planted a new batch, hopefully they will bear fruits soon. I love having fresh produce right at my doorstep.

Our papaya trees also have fruits now, soon I would have so much I would need to make Atchara nonstop.

How about you, do you have any fruit and vegetable in your garden or backyard? What are they?

I don’t play farmville in Facebook because I want the real thing . We just started with our vegetable garden a couple of months ago and I am very happy to have good results. Everyday I would go to my greenhouse and see the development of my crops. We love tomatoes so we planted lots of them. We planted two types of tomatoes, one type is from the Philippines and another one is beef tomato from Europe. For the Philippine tomatoes, I simply planted the seeds of the overripe tomatoes I had while the seeds of the beef tomatoes were from my brother in law sent over from Holland.

Philippines tomatoes

When you see flowers on your tomato plant you will get very soon a tomato.

Beef tomatoes

There’s nothing better than a ripe tomato straight from your very own garden.

Did you know that tomatoes can also be use as a natural acne treatment? What you need to do is take one tomato and mash it, spread the pulp on your face thoroughly. Leave it on your face for an hour and then wash it off with water and pat it dry. Do this for a week to eliminate your acne but if you don’t have the time for this you also buy ready made acne treatment, e.g. Acneticin.

Finally, what  is tomato a fruit or a vegetable? I am curious to know what you think .

This is my very first entry for

We live quite far from the supermarkets so we try to be self sufficient as much as we can. When we started our mahogany tree plantation 6 years ago we allotted an area exclusively for tropical fruits. We have planted all the fruits we can think of – you name it we have it.  Most are too young to bear fruits, however some fruit trees like banana, papaya, and pineapple give already fruit. We also had existing trees that gives us fruit regularly like jackfruit, calamansi, and soursop (guyabano).

I talked about my green house in the past and since my posting we have planted several vegetables like sweet potato, beans , bell pepper, green chilies, tomato, and eggplant. I am happy to tell you that we have already harvested most of them and boy oh boy they are really good!

Nothing tastes better than fresh produce from your very own garden!

The great thing about living in our plantation is that we get beautiful organic produce right from our own land. This is what I have always wanted. Just recently we harvested these huge bananas.  We asked our little Big Boss to inspect the goods….

He checked the size and the color….

He seemed pretty satisfied with it … I think.

It’s a pity though he cannot eat them yet. He still need to wait at least 2 months!

It’s a lot of fun living in our plantation. I am sure Sean would love trying out all the fruits we have here.

We will soon celebrate our first year of living here in Palawan. It feels just like yesterday. I was so busy packing last year that even the easiest task like click here was too tiring for me. Fast forward to today, we’re now enjoying every moment of Palawan. I’m still busy but it’s not about packing anymore, and you know the reason why, motherhood!

I am just glad that we have settled here before Sean came into picture. We moved here when I was pregnant with him, but the thing is, it would have been more difficult if we moved with a baby in tow. My pregnancy was in perfect timing to moving into our Palawan home. A few more tweaks in here (yeah like house help, some sleep etc) and I can say we’re all set.

In Palawan, we have plenty of brown outs or block out. I think we get around 20 times each month. It would go on and off several times, it’s annoying when we are in the middle of watching a good movie and suddenly the electricity will be cut off. It’s not like we are walking with eotech 512 all the time.

I wonder if it’s only here in Palawan or does it happen also in other parts of the country?

The summer is almost here, if you are in search a unique vacation, why not try diving in Palawan. I myself would love to try that once in my life but with a small baby I won’t be able to do that now. But if you have the opportunity, go to EL Nido, Palawan. It’s one of the best diving and camping site in the Philippines, definitely a diver’s paradise. This area is declared by Philippine government as one of its protected area; there is a vast diversity of wildlife that people can actually enjoy.

El Nido is also considered as the first and last frontier of Philippines thus conservation and preservation of wildlife and marine life is the utmost concern of the local government. The place boast of the wonderful marine animals, there are shipwreck diving areas in this place so bring your metal detectors underwater while diving, you’ll never know what you will find !

I am happy to say that after one and a half year of building, our dream house is finally finished. Our house is not the typical house you would see here in the Philippines. The design of the roof was inspired by the batak houses from Indonesia. The walls are massive as it is built with river stones. The balcony is very spacious, Sean will have lots of space to run around when the time comes.

I am a bit afraid though that the space between the baluster is a bit big that Sean might squeeze himself in them. I don’t think safety signs will help because he won’t be able to read them yet anyway .

As some of you know, we have a farm and employs several families to help us maintain it. We have 5 families here at the moment. Our people are like family to us. At the end of the year, we give them a year end bonus and we usually throw a Christmas party for them.

This Christmas I am thinking of doing something extra since this year is extra special because of Sean’s birth. I was thinking of giving them eco bags like the ones my Marce Pehpot gave away on Sati’s birthday. This is such a perfect gift for our people since we are advocating living green. A green shopping bag like this would encourage our employees to be more environment conscious.