Ann's Blog
Hog Island, Grenada:
January 4, 2011
Fruitful walking
No doubt the people sitting on their cool porches to whom we called out “Season’s Greetings” thought we were daft foreigners to be walking in the heat of a holiday afternoon. But it was Boxing Day, we had been eating too well, and it was time for some exercise. Besides, walks in Grenada always yield surprises – frequently, they’re delicious ones – especially when you miss the correct turn (or two) and your goal of a short stroll turns into a sweaty three-hour excursion that meanders from paved road to overgrown trail, from muddy track to barely discernible path.
On the unpaved road almost back to our starting point at Clarkes Court Bay Marina, where we had tied up Snack, we passed a stranger climbing out of a pickup truck. “Season’s Greetings,” I said.
“The same to you,” he replied. “Do you like pumpkin?”
“I love pumpkin.”
He disappeared into the thicket off the path, returned with an armload of pumpkins, and set one down at my feet. “For you.” He gardens on the hillside right off the road, he said, and he had come on Boxing Day to do a little harvesting. Curried Pumpkin Ginger Soup was suddenly in our (and our dinner guests’) future.
Gluttons for punishment – or just gluttons – the next day we took another walk, which yielded another edible surprise. This time we pulled Snack up on the tiny beach on the “mainland” side of our anchorage, where a track once led to Mr. Butters’ farm (one of our sources of vegetables during the years I wrote about in An Embarrassment of Mangoes). Mr. Butters was forced to leave his land almost a decade ago to make way for a development that still hasn’t happened, and except for a small okra patch being cultivated by a local guy, the fields lie fallow.
Though we had walked this way many times in the past, we had never passed the cherry trees just up from the beach when they were laden with fruit. But now, bingo. These West Indian or Barbados cherries are a different fruit than the cherries we know from our summers up north. These have red skins, but yellow-orange flesh, and three ovalish seeds rather than a single pit. They’re tart and juicy. Also called acerolas, they’re known as a “super berry” – one of the richest natural sources of vitamin C. (One cherry is said to have 65 times more Vitamin C than an orange.) No one but the birds, however, was getting their Vitamin C from the ones on these trees: The ground underneath was littered with ripe cherries.
We returned the next day with a plastic bag and picked a pound or so. I made juice, and it disappeared in a flash. (I gave our fisherman friend Dwight a taste, and he pronounced it excellent – telling me how rich it was in Vitamin C.) We returned the day after that for a couple more pounds, and I made jam. (Dwight pronounced that excellent, too.)
We returned a third time for a fresh supply of Vitamin C, and met some local guys having a cook-up on the tiny beach. After helping us beach Snack (and telling us how rich in Vitamin C the cherries are), one of them directed me to a “secret cherry tree.”
“It’s right through there, just past the tamarind tree,” he said. Fancy that: The cherry tree was dripping cherries, and the tamarind tree was laden with unripe pods. Tamarind also makes a great drink. And it’s full of Vitamin C. Another walk is in our future….
Back to topSign up to be notified by email when I post a new blog