Category Archives: Food

Pre-birthday views and celebrations

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Normally I would have started the celebrations from 1st October and in fact, when I turned a significant age a few years ago, I celebrated for the whole year. This year, work has kept me busy, so it started late, on Friday, with lunch at the hotel I used to work at. Yesterday was the beach and today I was back for lunch at the hotel again. Here are some scenes. No captions necessary…though I did add some 🙂

Grenada is one seriously beautiful island….like Jamaica.

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Grand Anse Beach

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Panoramic shot

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Healthy eating

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View from the lunch area

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Lagoon by dusk

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Teeny tiny cake

Make a wish!

Make a wish!

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Beautiful sky

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Holy Toledo!!!

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At the Hardware store this morning, I saw this scale.

Yikes!!!!!

Yikes!!!!!

Scales are not my friend.

These two cartoons say it all.

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I didn’t cry or curse when I stepped on the scale this morning. I just said

“Holy Toledo!!!!!!!!”

Clove – a culinary star with versatility

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I love the smell of all spices and clove is one of my favourites. Though I don’t use it often, when I do, the aroma pleasantly tickles my olfactory receptor neurons. That means that it smells lovely! I put one or two buds in my herbal tea sometimes. Any more and it’s overbearing. I don’t eat ham anymore so I had to find some other way to enjoy Clove.

Here is an article I wrote for The Caribbean Current on this versatile culinary and medicinal star.

Experiments in the Kitchen

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This year, as I will have some more time on my hands, I am experimenting with new things. That includes spending more time in the Kitchen. Although I did not do Food & Nutrition in secondary school, I have been cooking since I was about 13 when my mother took me and said “this is how you cut up a chicken”. I don’t eat meat anymore, so I am experimenting with both raw foods and vegetarian and vegan dishes. I was so pleased to find this recipe on Twitter and even more pleased when I recognized I had ALL the ingredients in my fridge. Yes, even Chickpea Flour! Who da h*ll has Chickpea Flour in their fridge???? A non-meat eater like me of course!

First issue though was….does my oven work? A call to the former tenant (a friend) returned a voicemail. Went upstairs to the Landlord but what he told me did not work. Thank goodness for a toaster oven, which I had resisted buying but a friend insisted and she’s usually right. It saved the day. Once you get a feeling, you just gotta go with the feeling, else the feeling might not ever appear again!  Continue reading →

Nutmeg…..

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Grenada’s black gold

From my adopted island.

Look out for more of my articles on The Caribbean Current .

My sweet teeth were nagging me today

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After a day spent working at home, I decided I needed some fresh air. I was feeling for something sweet (sugar……my drug of choice!) and since I don’t want to be tempted, I don’t buy anything like that. Well, most times I don’t. I have Dates, but didn’t feel for that. I had heard about a place in ‘town’ called Chelsea’s Cafe, which serves homemade Gelato.

Ah ha! I hatched a plan. Since I knew I was going to have extra calories, why not earn them?  Continue reading →

“You need a crown…..”

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….not the Kingly or Queenly type, although it would have been nice if I were a Queen in need of a crown. I’m sure Buckingham Palace Peeps could whip up one in no time. Well this is a different type, and I was crest-fallen when I heard those words this week. Continue reading →

This is my Carnival

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Carnival is on in Trinidad, and wonderful memories came running back to me of my first time (not like what Destra sang about this year :)). The year was 1990 and it was a couple months after I had started my first proper job. The desire to go to Carnival though, might not have arisen had I not done the university course I did.

Back in the day, Soca was not very popular in Jamaica. Sure….the old folks liked Sparrow and others of that era. But young people, unless you had been exposed to Trinis, did not gravitate to that genre of music. I spent the first two years in Jamaica and I can’t recall meeting or bonding with any Trinidadians there. I had been to Trinidad first in 1979 and maybe I slept the time away but I don’t remember much about the food, except a green banana and saltfish combo. When we hit Nassau for the second half of university, there began my education about all things Trini. Continue reading →

Out and about in “town”

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If you live in the Caribbean, particularly in the smaller islands, going into the Capital is referred to as “going to town”. Well, more precisely, “going to tung”. Last Friday while the air-conditioning in my jeep was being repaired, I decided I was going to “tung”. I’ve been several times before, but somehow, being on foot once again caused me to see little things I may have missed before.

First it was to Church street. Destination was a government office at one end of it, opposite the Catholic Church. I started out at the opposite end and slowed down when I saw this house, situated beside the Anglican Church, destroyed in Hurricane Ivan.

IMG-20140228-00765There is a garage attached to the house. A gentleman was there doing some woodwork. Chatted with him and found out he lives in the house and had helped to restore the lovely wooden details.

Here is a close up (and yes, I asked him permission before I took both photos).

Intricate wooden trim

Intricate wooden trim

 

 

 

 

After dodging a mad man who was peeing, I stopped at the intersection of Church Street and Market Hill.

Continue reading →

Dry Coconut……another achievement.

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To the ordinary person, this might just look like a plate with some dry coconut. However, it symbolizes no ordinary feat…..

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Growing up, I had seen my father crack open the coconut and husk out the edible portion, but I had never done it. Some years ago when I was living on my own and wanted dry coconut, I got someone at work to break open the shell for me, since I did not have a cutlass. I then attempted to husk out the coconut and in the process, broke the tip of the knife. See Exhibit A.

Continue reading →