The Taste of Good Food Begins in the Garden
Earth, water, sun, and love
Every ethnic grouping believes that their cooking is the best. The dish that was the family favourite — the one that your grandmother made when she knew that the family was coming together to eat and talk and enjoy being with one another is still ingrained in your memory and elicits the watering of taste buds on the mere thought.
Well, I believe that Caribbean cooking is the best, the most flavourful and the most savourful. If you have ever had Caribbean food, from conch fritters in the north of the chain to bake and shark in the south and all the islands’ deliciousness in between, then you would understand what I am talking about.
I am not the best cook — a mean green salad and stewed beans is about as far as my kitchen talent lies, but I am an excellent gardener! I know plants and I know what to give them to make them produce their best and tastiest fruits. I spend countless hours in the little area just outside my house that slopes down gently into a ghaut, (or gully, or ravine, or dry river, or natural watercourse) planting food and herbs and spices that I know are necessary for any Caribbean pot.
I tend my garden with love, I speak to my plants and encourage them to produce their best since only the finest vegetables can produce the best dishes.
I imbue my energy into these plants which translates into delicious pumpkins, dasheen, scallion and thyme, basil and ginger and papaya and spinach and….. there are a lot of things growing in this little garden.
So when my relatives come together for a flatbread fiesta where we have sun-ripened tomato salsa on stewed chicken or Caribbean pork seasoned with fresh oregano and mint, or shadow-bennied* fish caught just the day before in our warm Caribbean waters or curried mutton fed on nothing but grass and local vegetation, we understand the vibrations that went into what we are eating, from the one who tilled the soil to the one who prepared the meal and we give thanks for it all and for being together, for being family.
*shadow beni (culantro, chadon beni, Eryngium foetidum )
