Cakes and soups. That’s how I will remember October. With a visitor from France as keen on eating as we are, it was the perfect occasion to sample more Mexican food, either during our many excursions (see this post) or in the boat. Tortilla soup,

lime soup,

black beans and chorizos, …

so enthusiastic we girls were about experimenting with local produce that Terry eventually was crying for anything but tacos! Luckily for him, our dear friend, Marie Suzanne had the perfect antidote and stepped in with dutch baking recipes.

It actually started with her daydreaming in the back of the car, while on the road to Merida. We talked about food (what else?) and her project to set up a Dutch Pastry stand at her town’s Christmas Market, and thought nothing better than have her doing a practise run on the boat. Her description of  homemade marzipan, speculoos biscuits, and Christmas bread made my mouth water all the way back to P.A and I couldn’t wait to add new pages to my notebook. Marie Suzanne was only too happy to oblige, though found it challenging to start without any of her familiar ingredients available in Mexico. Welcome to my world!

That’s when having WIFI in a marina (or anywhere for that matter!) is invaluable: we learned to peel almonds from here, create your own speculoos mix from there (incredibly, I had ALL the ingredients on board!), to bake the perfect “Gevulde Speculoos”. I happened to have a recipe for the Christmas Bread in one of my breadmaking books, but admit I’d never have dared attempt it if it wasn’t for my friend showing me how easy it is to make.

So was very disciplined for a couple of weeks, no sweets, BBQ meat and lots of vegies, especially after reading this recent article about sugar in  National Geographic…until Halloween week. So many parties, yours truly commissioned for cakes (coconut, chocolate, banana…), repaid in drinks, not a good deal it turned out. Well I can’t say I didn’t know what would happen, so I am assuming full responsibility for any potential weight gain, liver damage or diabete in the future. On the upside, we’ve had no need for candies this year and the boat is full of the aromas of cinnamon and nutmeg, bringing back memories of last fall in the US. The smell of holidays season coming soon!