I am hungry and I want to come home to Guyana to eat.
There has been much discussion among psychologists, behavioural analysts etc about the various types of effects that the Covid-19 shutdown/lockdown has had on people. I am one of the fortunate persons who have and continue to thrive in a shutdown/lockdown situation (though much of Barbados has reopened). I am not really an outgoing person (that is not to say that I do not enjoy social interaction). However, I like my own company, and as long as there are books and streaming services, I am very well taken care of. I cook, I bake, I share, I eat, I exercise, I do my work online, and keep in touch with friends and family thanks to the technology. All well and good. What I find restrictive, stifling, and frustrating (though understandable given the Covid-19 circumstances), is the inability to travel. Oh. My. Goodness. I want to get on a plane and go somewhere and the place I really want to travel to is Guyana.
I am tired of eating my own food. And as much as I cook a lot of Guyanese cuisine, I want to eat and taste those foods in Guyana, prepared by other people. I want to immerse myself in the environment, the atmosphere, the smells, the sounds, the variety. It is not that I want to go gallivanting, eating out, after all, we are still in a pandemic; I am talking about some good home cooking with the characteristic freshness of ingredients and variety that is readily available in abundance in Guyana. Of course, one has to checkout certain places that are cooking for order pick-up. So, here is how this eating would go down on the first day.
Waiting for me would be some hot fish curry – heat from temperature and the pepper. Green mango and a few ochroes, tossed in a few minutes before the curry is finished cooking – that’s lunch. In the evening, a wicked, mixed Chinese Fried Rice with its salt and pepper, soy-glazed roast chicken and the signature red roast pork sliced thinly heaped on top, along with lashings of hot pepper sauce. This will be eaten with a spoon; hold the fork.
The next day, breakfast is a plate-full of seasonal fruits from which I can take my pick – mamee, tangerine, watermelon, mangoes, cherry, soursop, pomegranate, papaya, whitey, sapodilla, dounce, bananas, cashew, and a few others. Snacking on some sweet genip would be a refreshing afternoon treat.
After breakfast, the rest of the trip would be spent enjoying things like Cook-up Rice with the works, Black Pudding with sour and achar, Fish cakes wrapped with puri, dressed with sour; dhal and rice with bunjal white-belly shrimp, eddo-leaf callaloo cooked with coconut milk and a side of fried Bangamary. This weekend being the celebration of Eid al-Adha, there is bound to be that amazingly delicious, melt in your mouth pastry that we call Muslim mitai or fat mitai (lol). Oh, and the meat! Lamb/mutton and beef curry all over the country this Eid weekend. I would be in curry heaven! An evening meal of Guyanese style fish and chips – Bangamary, snapper or pacoo (monkfish). I prefer the monkfish here with hot plantain fries, so so good; chase it down with a couple of ice-cold Banks shandy. And then of course, one can never come to Guyana and not have tennis roll with cheese, cream soda, and milk.
Honestly, this would have been an ideal weekend to be in Guyana for Eid and Emancipation celebrations. It would have also given me a chance to stock up on whole spices, a special blend of garam masala that one of my cousins has made in at a mill in Berbice. I’d be shopping for honey, smoked fish, dried shrimp, cassareep, plantain flour porridge and so on. There would also be a few imported items that I cannot get here like golden raisins, lap cheong (Chinese dried cured sausages), Marshall’s sardines, and milk powder. By the end of the trip, I would start to worry about the weight of my suitcase because I’d also have cooked frozen food to bring – fried fish, dhal puri, black pudding and white pudding, fish curry and cooked shrimp. Sigh. One day though, soon (hopefully), when things calm down and it is sensible to make non-essential travel, I’d be heading home to Guyana. It beckons.
Have a great weekend everybody.
Cynthia
