Jardinero Santos

Allow me to introduce Santos our Gardner. He is an very good Gardner and pretty handy in general. The property we live on is on the side of the hill and Santos keeps the grounds in beautiful shape.

We are fortunate and have many fruit trees. Santos is holding some freshly chopped Plantains in the picture to the left.

Plantains are bananas that are generally used for cooking, as contrasted with the soft, sweet banana varieties (which are sometimes called dessert bananas). Plantains tend to be firmer and lower in sugar content than dessert bananas and are commonly used when green or underripe and therefore starchy. Plantains are a staple food in the tropical regions of the world, treated in much the same way as potatoes and with a similar neutral flavour and texture when unripe. They are grown as far north as Florida, the Caribbean, the Canary Islands, Madeira, Egypt, and southern Japan or Taiwan and as far south as KwaZulu-Natal and southern Brazil. The largest exporter of plantains to the United States is Colombia. It is assumed that the Portuguese Franciscan friars were responsible for the introduction of plantains to the Caribbean islands and other parts of the Americas. The Spaniards, who saw a similarity to the plane tree that grows in Spain, gave the plantain its Spanish name, platano. (Wikipedia 2006)