Grenada - Busy Saturday

"Bam!". On Saturday I went to a Caribbean cooking demonstration with some of the other ladies from the marina. Brian Benjamin is the chef and owner of BB's Crab Back restaurant in St. George (I think he also has one in Ealing, UK). He was born here but lived most of his life in London where he earned rave reviews and awards at the Renaissance Hotel Heathrow. He moved back here and is the Emeril of the Caribbean, specializing in West Indian cooking using local produce and meats. He showed us how to make curry paste, callalloo soup, and a whole host of other dishes. The nicest thing was that he showed us how to pick out ripe produce and I finally learned how to properly slice up a mango (they can be very messy if you don't know what you're doing!) Anyway he had a large staff working for him and a flair for the dramatic, so whenever he finished with a demonstration or needed another ingredient he would shout "Cinderella!" and one of his helpers would come and clean up after him or bring him what he asked for. I'm sure the rest of the staff didn't appreciate it very much -- they gave him some surly looks when his back was turned. But it was very entertaining to watch. After the demonstration we all sat down to a lunch of curried goat, barracuda with red wine sauce, breadfruit french fries, rice and "provisions" (cooked plantains and dasheen). It was all very good and hopefully I will be able to reproduce some of it (well, maybe not the curried goat -- they are too cute to eat).

"Drinkers with a running problem" is the slogan of the Hash House Harriers. On Saturday afternoon, Kevin and I participated in the 560th Grenada Hash. "Hashing" got it's start back in the 1930's by three Brit ex-pats living in Malaysia who belonged to a club whose dining area was called the "Hash House". They wanted to get some exercise to justify all the beer drinking that they did and the Hash House Harriers were born. Here in Grenada, they hash every other Saturday. Each hash begins and ends at a different local rum shop. Someone has already laid a trail (marked by shredded paper) that you are supposed to follow, and you can either run or walk. Sometimes they put in false trails and so you have to go back and find the real trail. Today's hash had easily 200 people, and it was a lot of fun. Most of us were just walking, since we had to cross a river several times (very wet!) and part of the trail was extremely steep so we had to scramble up using our hands. It's non-competitive so everyone goes at their own pace and the trail leads back to the rum shop where you started. The party afterwards is the main reason people go to these things -- everyone had a beer or two (or three or four!), and they had a special ritual for hash "virgins". I am not supposed to say what it was, but I will say that at the end Kevin and I were soaked and reeked of beer. We will definitely be back again. (For those of you in Phoenix who are interested, there are several "kennels" there, see link: http://www.phoenixhhh.org/ Try it -- it's a lot of fun!)

We got back to Clarkes Court just in time for the Saturday night karaoke, so I played DJ despite the fact that I was dirty, sweaty, and stank of beer (no one wanted to do any duets with me!). Earlier in the week, Kevin and I had downloaded and burned nearly 400 karaoke tracks so there was a good list to choose from and we had three times as many people singing as there were on Tuesday. I had a blast helping people pick out songs that would "unleash their inner diva", so this could turn into a permanent gig.