Ants in my pants

I shot this picture while on the water taxi between Belize City and Caye Caulker.

As you can see, it was a dead calm day. Hurricane Emily was passing and sucked all the breeze away.

The words are kinda small, but the caption says "The beach, the sun, the infinite turquoise water deceive you into thinking that there is no beginning and there is no end. When the sun goes down in the Caribbean, the stars come out and the Milky Way makes us step out of our bodies and reach for the infinite. There is the doorstep to understanding all things."

So, I found a box of Jiffy mix corn bread at Brodies in Belize City. I have to take a side path here first and explain where I am located and where Brodies is in realation to where I live. I live on an island 20 miles offshore from Belize. Its a 45 minute water taxi boat ride each way to Belize City.

Any girl from Michigan grew up making cakes for their easybake oven from these mixes. So I thought... cool.... NOT COOL, it was a stale and ant infested but so expensive I picked the little critters out, made the stuff and fed it to Mr. Bigness anyway. I came up with the spoon/fork technique and I think I've perfected it. You toss the mix with the fork (with little flicks) and scoop the critters up with the spoon, being careful to NOT get too much mix on the spoon, flinging them into the sink. Definintely eye-hand coordination going on here. I'm glad I didn't refridgerate the mix, because it would have killed the ants and they would have been harder to flick out of the mix. Moving ants make better targets for the flick/scoop technique.

So, that was my baking in Belize tip of the day... maybe I should include it in the "Cooking in Belize with Chef Lee" cookbook. I don't think that it hurts you to eat ants anyway. Yes, I'll keep telling myself that.

So what do corn muffins and ants have to do with the infinite turquoise water and the stars coming out of the Milky Way? Ah, yes, there is the doorstep to understanding all things.O.K. now stop, I'm making fun of myself. So I guess my point is, yes I'm living in paradise, but its paradise with a price. Oh, and another thing, if you mix the batter real good, the ants fall apart when you bake the muffins, and no one is the wiser. BTW, I don't DO spiders!