Caribbean and Tropical Food

  Have you ever encountered hard times while growing up in the Caribbean? Parents often told their families that they were to eat certain foods because "they are good for you". They never said good for what. It is against this backdrop that I have always questioned what foods do within my body. As I age, I became even more interested since when life began at 40; no one ever said what it would begin to do. Finding out is experiential. The wear and tear on our bodies over the years seem to start manifesting themselves at this stage. Perhaps it's time we stop taking things we eat for granted and begin to understand exactly what they do within our bodies and why we should consume them the way we do. I am suspecting this may take more than one article. There are just so many foods that we are yet to understand their relationship within our bodies. Here are a few: Breadfruit; As quoted from this source - click link :  It is an excellent source of proteins, essential amino acids...

This isn't an article that excludes or alienates other races, but one that celebrates blacks through cuisine.  We have a long legacy of creating scarcity meals that would satisfy a family's hunger with minimal resources. When you look at the surface, the black family had many mouths to feed back in the day. It's not like now, when careers have resulted in shrinking families, at the time, the thinking was different and family was a way of ensuring that you had a means of support as you aged.  We were always told, "Your strength goes through your mouth", with the adults saying at the time, "I love to see children with a hearty appetite". If you were lacking a healthy appetite, we would get shark oil with B complex, or other fish oils. Cod liver oil, Geritol, and others. Who remembers Sonatogen Tonic Wine?  Meal times were when families got together and shared, not only food but what their day was like and the experiences they encountered. If friends of you...

  Regardless of where you live in the Caribbean, we all look forward with expectancy to a good Sunday meal. It's a one-time meal where everyone can get together and share in fun and fellowship for great and memorable times.  Whatever your diet, there's something for everyone around the Sunday meal. Vegan, vegetarian, meat eater and any combination of these ways of eating. Keto, paleo, and so forth.  However, we have often heard people say at some point in the journey of life that they don't want to eat the same old same ole. They want something else different.  Now these pictures show Sunday meals from a variety of places in the Caribbean. They form part of the culture of these countries. Why do these meals seem to be similar? It goes beyond the actual food and goes into the cultural values we developed over many years.  Why don't we eat like this during the week?  How did these become the food of Sunday?  Why don't we eat on Saturday, choosing simple ...

 If you ever had the opportunity to sit around listening to the elderly in our communities talk about food when they were growing up and your ear was keen, you would pick up on a few things. They had a process by which they managed food from the way it was grown, stored, cooked and even consumed. Their methods ensured that they had enough to last the family for a prescribed time, and their measured usage ensured that they contained costs as money was quite scarce.  We now put all kinds of fancy names to what they were doing. If you ever studied food and beverage, you would recognize that some of these practices are age-old and formalized in a manner so they could be taught academically.  Let's cast our minds back with them and examine the benefits of what they call ground food. We would recognize that eating this way had benefits as those older generations were strong - mentally and physically, in a real way, not having to rely on a gym or other stimulants to get going. T...

  Why am I showcasing this video, even though it's NOT from the Caribbean in any way? This is what culture looks like and I want to say thanks to Mark Wiens for showing us his culinary travels. [See his channel here and subscribe , he has wonderful content]  I have followed Mark over the years as he gives authentic descriptive feedback about the food experiences. He describes the cooking processes, the textures, tastes, and flavours, and while using a myriad of adjectives to describe not only the food but the experiences, we get to travel vicariously through him. Can I say I love his show? You probably get that by now. Check out his videos on Jamaica and Trinidad as well.  This video speaks of tradition, imagine sharing foods prepared the same way over 300 years. To me, that goes beyond any cultural definition.  It is something that many food establishments struggle with when speaking about the consistency of their product. They don't just serve food here, they deliv...