Ann's Blog
Chaguaramas, Trinidad:
January 1, 2012
Happy New Year
A happy, healthy, peaceful, prosperous 2012. And for our friends who live in floating homes, may the year be filled with fair winds and calm anchorages. When I last wrote, we were on our way to Maracas Beach on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, not sure if we would make it because a landslip (Trini for landslide) had blocked part of the only road leading to the beach. The boulder was as big as advertised – my first thought when I saw it was, Good thing it came tumbling down at night when the road was deserted – and it still sat where it had landed. Apparently, it had defeated the efforts of a front-end loader, and the road crew was still scratching their heads about what to try next.
The rest of the holiday season, I felt like we were living a Trini Christmas card I found. The outside of the card looks like a pastelle – a tamale-like delicacy that is synonymous with Christmas here. It consists of cornmeal dough spread with a sweet and savoury minced-meat mixture, then wrapped in a rectangle of green banana leaf, tied with string, and steamed. (Well-made pastelles are divine.)
also baked me a sweetbread that
disappeared scarily fast)
Ah true Trinbago Recipe
1 jug of sorrel
2 sweetbread to bake
3 dozen pastelle
4 big black cake
One more ingredient
To make this lime sweet
Are the friends and family
To share this pastelle treat.
Over the holidays, we were invited to dinners, fetes, and limes at the homes of people we’ve come to know here, and they shared their homemade pastelles, sweetbread, black cake, and other seasonal specialties. But more important, they shared their friendship. A thank-you to all of them from the bottom of our hearts.
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