Belize 🇧🇿 – GuraLife

Our Belize Meal

Our Belize meal consisted of Stew Chicken atop Johnny Cakes, Fried Plantains, and Sweet Potato Pone. The stew chicken was made with bell peppers, onion, Habanero pepper, and Red Recado – very flavorful! We made the Red Recado paste from scratch. The recipe included Annatto seeds, chili powder, garlic, onion, oregano, All Spice, cider vinegar, orange juice, salt, and pepper. The Annatto Seeds had to be soaked overnight. The most prominent flavors were the Annatto seed and chili pepper. Neither of us had tasted Annatto before so it was new to us. We both loved it! When searching for Annatto seeds we found La Plaza Supermarket in Westlake which has delicious Mexican and Central American food.

The Johnny Cakes were biscuits made from melted butter, flour, baking powder, salt, and coconut milk. They were good with the chicken on top. The Sweet Potato Pone was good but had an “interesting” texture.

About Belize

While researching Belize, I found The Travel Book which I love. It suggests books to read, movies to watch, and lists facts for every country in the world. The book recommended for Belize was ‘The Last Flight of the Scarlett Macaw’ by Bruce Barcott. It is the story of Sharon Matola’s quest to prevent the building of a dam that would flood the nesting grounds of the last Scarlett Macaws in Belize.

Bruce Barcott’s description of Belize…
Belize goes unnoticed by the rest of the world, and over the years the country has parlayed it’s obscurity into an attractive asset. For those shipwrecked on the shoals of life, Belize offers a new beginning. The country teems with adventurous refugees who set up shop in the middle of the central American jungle. British innkeepers, Mennonite farmers, Chinese shopkeepers, Lebanese entrepreneurs , American missionaries, Canadian aid workers, and Dutch scientists live peacefully alongside the nation’s longer established residents, the Garifuna artists, Maya cacao growers, Mestizo plantation managers, and Creole politicians who make up the majority of the countries population. Belize draws the eccentric, the mad cap, and the downright mad.

Belmopan is the capital of Belize. Belmopan has rapidly expanded from 16,000 residents in 2010 to about 27,000 in 2024. St. George’s Caye provides seclusion, relaxation, and rustic coastal charm, featuring 12 thatched cabanas and three private suites within an oceanfront villa. The Mask Temple in the Mayan city of Lamanai looks amazing! The Great Blue Hole is a giant marine sinkhole off the coast of Belize. The hole is almost perfectly circular and about 1000 ft across 400 ft deep.