One pineapple takes a year to grow. A full year. Or more. At the farm, we eat at least one pineapple for breakfast every morning. The outer peel is boiled in water to make tea and the rest is chopped up and served with other fruit and granola. Even the center core is eaten because it is fully ripe, soft and juicing with flavor.

I have much more appreciation for pineapple after realizing the amount of time it takes to grow just one fruit. I've found that working in the garden planting, weeding, seeding, etc. makes you better appreciate the food on your table.

It is always exciting when someone brings a fresh bunch of bananas from the garden into the kitchen, but I also now know that another one of our banana trees is now dying because they only fruit once.

While we usually harvest food from the garden and bring it to the señoras (two older women who live in the community and cook and clean on the farm), the other morning we decided to make our own lunch, so Laura (New Zealand), Angela (Colorado) and I brought a few kids along to the garden for a harvesting and snacking adventure.

We walked through the rows of vegetables sucking on chunks of sugar cane and the pulp of cacao seeds while picking what looked ripe and appealed to our grumbling stomachs. The final product was grilled onions, sautéed kale, a big raw salad full of peppers and tomatoes, and of course rice. We also froze bananas for some blended banana "ice cream" later on.

There is something special about growing food, harvesting it from the garden, cooking it yourself and sharing the meal with people you care about.

The inside of the cacao fruit