When Grenada gives you gross little bugs, make starfruit lemonade.

This afternoon I grabbed all the ingredients necessary to make homemade flour tortillas. We have an excess of really good cheeses in our fridge right now, so it seemed fitting to plan to eat some seriously gourmet quesadillas for the next few days. You can buy tortillas at the store here, but they're pricey and they taste kind of gross (I don't know where they're shipped from, but they're less-than-fresh by the time they arrive). A few weeks ago I discovered that making tortillas myself is easy and inexpensive, and they taste really good.

So I grabbed my flour, opened the bag, and . . . ew. Tiny black bug infestation. Like, all I could see was black. No flour was even visible. I gagged because it was disgusting, but I wasn't really surprised, because the temperature and humidity levels here make Grenada any insect's dream vacation location. (And any human's dream vacation location, really. Bugs and humans--really not all that different, apparently.) Anyway, homemade tortillas were immediately ixnayed from the agenda.

I pouted about it for a minute while I clawed at the 200 mosquito bites I acquired at a beautiful cliff overlooking the Caribbean Sea during a romantic 30-minute dusk date with the hubs last night. It was one of those "what are we doing here, and whyyy??" moments (the bugs-and-mosquitoes incident; not the romantic date). But then I remembered that our front yard runneth over with delicious tropical fruits, so I set out to see what I could find to lift my mood.

^^This is a starfruit tree (or if you're Grenadian, it's a carambola tree). My lens was all fogged up for this photo because that's what happens when I take my camera straight from my air-conditioned bedroom to my 80% humidity front yard. It's cool though, right?

^^These are lemons. Yes, they are ripe. Oranges look like this here too, but they're a little bigger.

^^A slice of a starfruit . . . selfie. Time for a funny story. Jared and I both walk past both of these fruit trees (the lemon tree and the starfruit tree) multiple times a day, whenever we are leaving or coming home. I didn't notice the lemon tree until we had already been here for about a month. I think it's because the green lemons just camouflage in with the rest of our lush green yard. The starfruit tree is really close to the house, and for some reason I never looked closely at it to notice there was fruit on that one, either. 

Jared walked into the house last week with a starfruit in hand and said, "Look what I found!" Then I yelled, "Hey I love starfruit!! Where did you find it? I didn't see any at the store yesterday." When he told me we have a tree full of 'em in our yard, I think I might have attacked him. Starfruits have a really mellow flavor, and I think most Americans can take 'em or leave 'em, but I'm crazy about them. They're really watery and have a texture somewhere between a cucumber and an apple. They're sort of sweet and sort of tart, and nice and subtle. They look pretty in salads, but I like to slice them up and eat them plain. 

After I brought in my spoils, I decided to make a starfruit lemonade. I have a friend here who told me that she makes starfruit juice and it tastes a lot like lemonade, so I thought I'd combine the two. I squeezed the lemons into a cup and tossed the starfruit slices in, and then blended them up with water and a little sugar. You have to strain the juice so you don't get a mouth full of starfruit seeds and pulp, but it was worth the extra step.

Mmm, so refreshing! Like cucumber lemonade, but better. Get over her and I'll make you some!