Tamarind season runs from roughly January to March in Jamaica. The sour tasting fruit grows four or five in a pod, each with a small, flat black seed. When ripe, the pod becomes a light brown brittle shell that breaks easily to expose the sticky fruit. Tamarind is indigenous to Africa and likely came to the Jamaica and the Caribbean with enslaved Africans. It is high in tartaric acid, B...

Like a lot of people, I can’t believe 2013 is over. While it wasn’t a bad year overall, it presented a major personal challenge that forced me to change course, literally and figuratively, early in the year. As many of my regular readers know, I’ve been exploring Jamaica, my home country, since late 2011. I’d hit most of the places I wanted to see but there are still more that...

Following in the footsteps of acclaimed filmmakers like Spike Lee and Martin Scorsese, movie stuntman turned director, Roy T. Anderson has decided to go the crowdfunding route to help finance his latest project: a one-hour documentary film, Queen Nanny: Legendary Maroon Chieftainess. Queen Nanny was the indomitable leader of the Jamaican Maroons, and Jamaica’s only female National Hero. Anderson’s impressive début film Akwantu: the Journey, on the history of the...

There’s no Christmas in Jamaica without sorrel, a drink that is infused with ginger, sweetened with sugar and spiked with white overproof rum. It is as ubiquitous at Christmas time as rum cake, curried goat, and rice with pigeon (gungo) peas. A hibiscus variety, sorrel came to Jamaica from West Africa. According to the National Library of Jamaica website, references to Jamaican sorrel date to the 1700s. Sorrel is an...

The following is a round-up of travel news culled from the Jamaica Gleaner and the Jamaican Observer newspapers. Make the historic Cuba Cruise Five days after the winter tourist season commences, Jamaica will be part of history when Louis Critsal Cruises sails out of Montego Freeport en route to Cuba. This is the first time that a cruise line will operate ships between the two neighbouring countries. During an interview...

My visit to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Lesotho starting me blogging, but Jamaica was my inspiration to get in to travel. Though I was born in Jamaica, I don’t know it as well as I think I should. When I got laid off from my job in November 2003, I was excited. For several months prior, two friends and I had been planning our next professional moves. Mine was to...

Many of us learn to cook while watching the women in our families – our mothers, grandmothers, and aunties. Many others learn from using cookbooks. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen in my early days – but I was doing homework rather than actively watching my mother cook. Frankly, I wasn’t very interested, maybe because I was a picky eater, but she also wouldn’t let me near...

I’d be the first to say that I’m not an animal lover so I was mildly surprised at the number of photos of animals I’ve taken during the last year. Here are a few: The Cat at Croydon A friend who was a cat owner used to say that cats were humans in an earlier life. That’s why they act so superior. As we sat listening to the Croydon Plantation...

Jamaican cuisine draws heavily on the culinary traditions of the people who have called it home – the Tainos, the original people, Africans, Spanish, English, Portuguese, Indian, Chinese, and our own Rastafarians. However, almost everyone associates our cuisine with pepper, specifically Scotch bonnet. But you’d be wrong to believe that we rely solely on Scotch bonnet to fire up our food.  Here are five ingredients that you’re guaranteed to find...

A few years ago, my extended family started a monthly gathering to cook the meals that we grew up on, the dishes that we don’t have as often because we no longer have the luxury of someone else to prepare them for us. Each gathering was an all-day affair with reminiscences about growing up, side-splitting, tears-running-down-the-face laughter about who did what when, and plenty to eat and drink. The best...