Breakfast at the Casa de San Pedro, Highlight of a Southeast Arizona Journey!

Patrick Dome in Casa’s Kitchen

We begin this year’s Naturalist Journey’s Southeast Arizona Tour this Saturday, May 5^th, timed well for Cinco de Mayo celebrations and for Migratory Bird Day.  Highlights of this popular tour include scenery of Arizona’s  Sky Island mountain ranges, a host of birds and mammals more aligned with Mexico and living here at the north of their range, and…  breakfast at the Casa!

Waking up at the Casa de San Pedro is a delight, with smells of fresh coffee brewing and brilliant jewels of birds like their mascot, the Vermilion Flycatcher, right outside the door.  With coffee in hand, we watch hummingbirds at the feeders, or stroll over to the San Pedro River, a vital corridor for migratory songbirds.  Never are we too far from smells waifting out from the kitchen. When birders ask their guides “can we go back now” at the peak of migration, you know that good food is calling.  Served in their southwestern-style dining room at two hand-carved tables where conversation flows freely, we relish hearty fare prepared with care from scratch.

They always start with fresh seasonal fruit cup, some wonderful tempting hot, homemade muffin,  scone or buttermilk biscuit, and juice, tea (lots of choices), and coffee.

From here, one would need a week to sample their secrets. As this is one of Naturalist Journey’s all-time favorite lodges, blogger and company owner Peg Abbott has eaten breakfast at the Casa dozens of times, yet she says it would be hard to pick her favorite entrée.  Here is a sample of some of what a fine Casa morning may hold:

• Eggs Casa with a side of Ham and Salsa:  Eggs Casa is their signature dish – a crustless egg and      cheese pie with mild green chilies, corn – a very satisfying dish.
• Oatmeal Buttermilk Pancakes  with link sausage:  Their most requested recipe – the Oatmeal gives      the pancakes a slightly toothy texture, light and fluffy too.  And,      they serve it with real pure maple syrup (warm).
• Lavash Eggs – the Casa’s version of eggs benedict – lavash flat bread with sour cream, cheese,      bacon strips topped with poached eggs and hollandaise. Decadent!
• Baked Oatmeal – oven baked oatmeal baked with shredded apples, walnuts, craisins and cinnamon.       Served with link sausage and scrambled eggs.
• Spinach Quiche: A traditional quiche with flaky crust, spinach and a touch of nutmeg, which they serve      with bacon.
• Mexican Eggs:  They start with a freshly made tortilla, top with a stripe of non-fat refried      black beans, bacon strips, cheese (melted), topped with scrambled eggs,      green enchilada sauce, and diced tomatoes, chopped olives and sour cream.

Proprietors Karl Schmitt and Patrick Dome have hospitality down to a science. Their Inn gets a LOT of repeat business, and to no surprise, many of the guests (including Naturalist Journey’s owner Peg Abbott) put in their requests for favorite breakfasts.

While fabulous birding brings us to the Casa next week, we can highly recommend the Casa de San Pedro year-round. In the non-birding season, we linger longer at breakfast!

By the way, plan ahead and come enjoy this – next year’s Naturalist Journey’s tour is open for booking, May 4-11, 2013.

Jamaica: One of the Best Restaurants – Not a Restaurant at All!

Birdwatchers are a conservation minded-bunch, so taking alternate transportation to lunch seemed like a good selling point on our Naturalist Journey’s tour in quest to sample authentic Jamaican food. For many of us, the culinary highlight of a week-long tour, one featuring some great restaurants, turned out not to be a restaurant at all! Thsi is one of our picks for our new culinary endorsement series –  “Five Places to Get Fat While Birding.”

Welcome to Miss Betty’s, now called Miss Wissy’s, where you’ll find a few tables and chairs on a stony riverside beach.  Officially known as Belinda’s Riverside Canteen, family recipes for Jamaican Jerked Chicken have passed from mother (Betty) to daughter (Belinda, or “Wissy”) and rafters on the scenic Rio Grande River are in for a treat.  Like an apparition, one rounds the bend and there on the beach is a happy cluster of friends, ready to serve you a cold Red Stripe beer, and urge you to fill your bowl with hot pepperpot soup.  Both mother and daughter have walked the mile-long path from their hilltop home, with greens from the garden, sweet potatos, perhaps fresh crayfish caught that day. Maybe its happy chickens, but their jerk spice is beyond compare,  the tender meat as sweet as the smile on Miss Wissy’s face when she knows you feel well fed.  Well at ease, athletic from her walks, she seems at one with the simplicity of her endeavors.  This is truely a movable feast, as the river changes level with the rains no structure will stand the test of time. This is Jamaica, go with the flow!

The alternate transport we elected defines a new style of  “relaxed birding.”   The bamboo pole rafts we we ferried on date to the days when Jamaica shipped loads of banana’s and other produce from the Interior down the Rio Grande River. Raft guides say that Errol Flynn, the legendary seeker of fun who made Port Antonio his home, took friends for a float and a business was born.  Rains from the Blue Mountains of coffee fame feed the river’s flow.  Birdwatching from a bamboo raft built for two, as you glide through forested gorges rimmed by an unbroken expanse of GREEN feels exotic, a two to three hours immersion in Jamaica’s natural beauty. Spotted Sandpipers, Black-crowned Night-Herons, Tricolored Herons, Snowy Egrets, Jamaican Woodpeckers and Belted Kingfishers are often seen, some of them migrants here getting a break from northern winters as we are. Twenty feet or more in length, the bamboo pole rafts feel more like lounge chairs than boats. Many are decorated in flowers. No one is in a hurry.  All this beauty, novel transport and jerk chicken at Miss Betty’s – this is a birding vacation!

The Epicurean Birder is produced by the world-traveling guides of Naturalist Journeys, LLC. Lillian’s is one of five Jamaican restaurants endorsed in their “Five Places to Get Fat While Birding” series, piloted in January, 2012. Sample great food on Naturalist Journey’s Jamaica tour March 31-April 6, 2012.

Honduras – Memorable Dining at Copan Ruinas

 

Dinner at Hacienda San Lucas, Honduras

One of the most memorable dining events of my 30-year guiding career for Naturalist Journeys has to be a dinner at Hacienda San Lucas near the world-renowned Mayan Ruins of Copan. We were here in the Honduran mountains with a birding group, guided by competent Robert Gallardo, one of the most recognized experts in Honduras. Luckily he knows FOOD too!

Robert settled in the town of Copan Ruinas in 1998, the same year the owner of the Hacienda San Lucas, Flavia Cueva, decided to come back home. Tired after years of a fast-paced catering career in Kentucky, she longed to be back in the sweet-smelling mountains and forests of her childhood days near Copan. The effort it took to restore the hacienda, largely then claimed by nature is unimaginable.

As we sat savoring the second of our five courses, Flavia smiled and gave us a history of her travails. Now peace and serenity veil the years of effort. I wanted to lick my plate after the main dish of grilled chicken with Mayan Adobo sauce. Similar in texture to an Oaxacan Mole, this sauce linger in my mind now years later.

Through this meal, I learned that this region of Honduras, tucked up against the Guatemalan border has its own cuisine. Flavia researched her recipes in detail, working with women from the local Maya Chortí village. Maybe the distinction of her food is in the preparation. Every dish is hand-crafted using tools of which many date to a century or more ago.

Friend and client Regina Anavy and I rode lovely, light-stepping gaited horses up to the restaurant from town. We joined our birding group which was having trouble focusing on finding Common Paraques (luckily a mission quickly accomplished) with so many delicious smells wafting up the hill. We drifted to our beautifully set tables on the lawn to find local tamales, and then a creamy corn soup waiting for us. It had just a hint of chilies, and was accompanied by a salad that was perfected by local citrus dressing. Dinner was timed so that we could savor sunset as well as the food. Desert was a local fruit creation with just the right spices – not too sweet. This meal is worth signing on to the tour alone! Join us this year for Easter in Copan, April 3-10, 2010 or check back for our 2011 dates. We promise a visit to dine at Hacienda San Lucas for sure!