Blueberry-Almond Biscotti

1# 4oz Bread Flour
4 tsp. (16g) Baking Powder
12 oz. (340g) Sugar
6 oz. (170g) White Bread Crumbs
8 oz. Whole Almonds
8 oz. Dried Blueberries
1/4 cup Orange Juice
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Squeeze of Lemon
5 Eggs
Egg Wash
Sugar for dusting

1. Sift flour together with baking powder and add sugar, breadcrumbs, nuts, and berries.

2. Combine OJ, lemon, vanilla, and eggs.

3. Mix together the dry and the wet to make a firm dough.

4. Divide into 4 ropes about 2" wide. Place on lined sheetpan and brush with eggwash and dust with sugar.

5. Bake at 350F (176C) for 25 minutes or until golden. Cool for about four hours.

6. Cut on the bias to desired thickness (no more than 1/4") and place on sheetpan. Bake at 375F (190C) for about 10 minutes or until brown on edges.

The Funza Within Me

My toe had been feeling a bit numb and I thought that I must have stubbed it after having one too many Konyagi dawas, a Swahili concoction made from local gin and tonic water which literally translates to “medicine”. After a couple days the numbness turned into a dull pain and an area the size of a lentil turned white. It seemed like an infection to me and I had intended on piercing it with a knife point or toothpick. A quick squeeze and a dose of methylated spirits and the problem should be solved.

I mentioned in a rather matter-of-fact way to Germanus, one of the resorts excursion guides, that I needed to pop it. He took one look at it and told me it was very bad idea to pierce it. He said it was a funza - not an infection. And furthermore, that if I popped it the “eggs would spread and make many many more”. Excuse me? There is something living under my toenail?

When the mango and cashew trees begin to flower the flowers bring with them the funza or jiggers. Jiggers are pregnant female mites that burrow under the skin, usually under the toenails. They lay eggs under the surface of the skin and cause a lot of itching and discomfort.

I am not terribly excited about foreign egg-laying parasites living within my being. Did it get me in my sleep? A creature that lives in my sheets or mattress? No. . . It lives in the sand. My first question was “why under the toe nail”? And that led to my second question, which should have been my first question. Do these things burrow in any places other than toes? Indeed they do and it is reason enough to never sit in the sand under a mango tree. I can not think of a more uncomfortable situation, socially or physically speaking, than having to ask someone to remove a funza from my asshole.

Apparently the funza are quite common and there is a special technique used for removing them. You want to create a small hole in the skin and gradually widen the hole without piercing the funza. Then you work something under it and push it up through the hole.

Germanus is the island specialist when it comes to removing these things. He fashioned a toothpick sort of device out of a dried palm frond and after a lot of convincing I let him literally take a stab at getting this thing out. He rooted around for a spell and then produced a white disk that resembled a flattened snail about the size of a peppercorn. It took about two weeks for the skin to heal around the area where it was living.

4771 Miles

I am 1200 miles into this trip and already freezing my ass off. The wise decision was made that I should drive to Alaska rather than fly. Captain Mike, slayer of barracuda and all other reef fishes of Nicaragua, met me at Dallas-Ft. Worth airport and that is where the journey starts. I caught an early morning flight (5:20am) out of Orlando to Dallas with a 40 minute layover in Charlotte. I tried to stay awake all night so I could sleep on the plane and a little in the car. But I failed. I fell asleep around 2:30am and the alarm went off at 4:20am. So I am starting the trip completely exhausted.

Captain Mike is taking the first length of the drive. We plan on reaching Boulder, Colorado by midnight to stay with Hailey, a good friend of Mike. Mike drives through Texas and up to Oklahoma City. Between catching up with Mike and the sheer excitement of this massive road trip I can't get any sleep. I take over at Oklahoma City and drive through the miserable state of Kansas to the Colorado border. I-35 through Kansas is flat and the scenery is cattle, oil rigs, wheat fields, and cattle. Eventually we come to I-70 and head west for Colorado. I can not manage a wink of sleep until Strasburg, just west of Denver. We arrive in Boulder about 12:30am. I have gained two hours from time zone switches and have been in six states in less than a 24-hour period.

I crash hard for about eight hours and wake up to the smell of coffee. Hailey has tarot cards waiting on the coffee table for our morning reading. I shuffle the deck for a while to "put my energy into the cards" and then draw three. I then find out that I am soon to meet a girl that will "rock my world". I find that my grandmother has some recipes that she hasn't yet shared with me. I find that I will be very successful around the age of 38. I find that I must let go of my juvenile past. And I find out that there is a baby in the future. So now, for the sake of my conscience, I will have to wear condoms AND pull out.

Boulder has some amazing shops that stock heaps of organics. I made dinner for everyone and we swapped stories over micro-brewed beers and good wines. The dominating conversation topics were why Rachel Ray is a whore of the culinary industry, when and why food should be stacked, and what the term "fusion food" really means.




We are off after relaxing for a day with goals of driving through Wyoming and spending time photographing Yellowstone. Ideally we will end up in Montana around 10:00pm and camp out. We have to average about 12 hours per day to make it to Alaska by May 10th. Mike has to be there by the 12th at the latest. Only five hours into the drive and we run into heavy snow and icey roads. With near white-out conditions we are forced to pull into Casper, Wyoming and spend the night in a Super 8. With any luck the storm will blow over and we will be able to make up the time tomorrow.