🍴 10-minute recipe Bo La Lot with a leaf you’ve never cooked before!

• 🌮 Forget boring tacos - this wrap will blow your mind! In Vietnam they call it Bo La Lot - beef wrapped in peppery Lalot leaves.
• 🌮 It started as grape leaf wraps in the Middle East, but in tropical Asia grapes don’t grow, so people swapped to Lalot. Way more flavor than grape leaves!
• 🌮 Grilled beef, garlic, onion, lemongrass - all can be tucked into these shiny green leaves. Smoky, juicy, and so good you’ll wonder why you didn't try it sooner! It's better than grape leaf wraps, because it has so much flavor!
• 🌮 Most large leaf pepper plants will work for this recipe - Vietnamese pepper Lalot (Piper sarmentosum), Betel Leaf (Piper betle), or even large leaves of the traditional Black Pepper plant (Piper nigrum).

🌯 BO LA LOT RECIPE

✔️ Ingredients

• · 1 pound ground beef or turkey
• · 2 tablespoons chopped lemongrass (optional)
• · 1 tbsp spice powder
• · 1 tbsp curry powder
• · 1 tbsp finely minced garlic
• · 1 tbsp oyster sauce or fish sauce (optional)
• · 1 tsp ground black pepper
• · 1 tbsp finely minced shallots
• · 1 tbsp soy sauce
• · 2 tsp sugar or honey
• · 1/2 tbsp olive oil
• · 1/2 tbsp salt
• · 10-15 fresh Lalot leaves

👉 Directions

• · Preheat the grill.
• · Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix well.
• · Wrap about 2 tablespoons of the mixture into each betel leaf.
• · Spear 3 to 4 betel leaf wraps onto a skewer and grill until the meat is thoroughly cooked.
• · Be sure to eat immediately.

📚 Learn more:

• Lalot beef wraps: Quick-n-Fun exotic recipes
• Vietnamese Pepper - Lalot food wraps BBQ recipe
• How to grow your own Pepper plants. Five most valuable Pipers
• How to to get Pepper leaves large and green

Can you name all the fruits on this tray? One of them will stump you!

• 🥭 This morning I walked the garden and came back with a tray of fruits! That’s the joy of living in Florida with your own tropical garden: something new is always in season.
• 🥭 On today’s tray: Papaya, Avocado, Egyptian guava and Cas guava, Barbados cherry… And this little red one? Peanut butter fruit!
• 🥭 At Top Tropicals, you’ll find every tropical fruit tree you can imagine. What fruits are you harvesting from your garden right now?

• 10 best fruit trees to grow in Florida and Southern landscapes
• Five best fruit trees to plant in Summer
• Top 10 fast-fruiting trees

💎 You won't believe what glows in the shade: the rare blue ginger

• 💎 If you ever spot a flash of electric blue in the tropical shade, you might think your eyes are playing tricks on you, but that vivid color belongs to a rare Dichorisandra thyrsiflora - Blue Ginger.
• 💎 Despite its name, this isn’t a true ginger at all. It’s actually related to Tradescantia, the same family as familiar houseplants like the Wandering Jew and Spiderwort. Native to Brazil, Blue Ginger thrives in warm, humid shade, making it a perfect choice for patios, screened porches, garden corners, or indoor collections.
• 💎 Its glossy leaves and tall stems topped with clusters of sapphire-blue blooms create a tropical jewel effect. The flowers attract hummingbirds and butterflies, adding life and motion to shady areas where few other plants bloom so brightly.
• 💎 Give it rich, well-drained soil, steady moisture, and partial shade - and enjoy one of the rarest colors in the tropical plant world.

📚 Learn more: