Travel with JoY

"I have to go gather the ingredients," says Ishon, the chef for the day.    We were staying at a small hillside resort, the Caribbean Cottage Club above the chichi Port Louis Marina on the island of Grenada, West Indies.  The half acre property has seven humble wooden cottages; the grounds lush with the growth of Coconut Palms, Banana trees, Citrus and flowering shrubs such as the Plumeria, all awash in the regular misty showers that waft down the mountainside to the sea.  I asked Ishon if I could watch or help prepare the Oildown for the evenings communal dinner. "I will let you know when I am ready" as he lumbered out the gate to find provisions. 'Provisions' is the term for the mostly ground crops such as sweet potatoes, dasheen ( aka Taro), Yam and breadfruit, a starchy tree fruit. Hours later, with all the ingredients laying out on his outdoor concrete table Ishon called me to help and said, " I should have told you to bring a knife" only to...

No I didn't get a massage with oil, and no I didn't get an oil change, but instead finally found one of the last three servings of Oildown, the national dish of Grenada at Babes.  Oildown is a culinary staple of the island, and the reason there were only three servings left at Babes restaurant is because when they make Oildown, there is, as Andre our driver said, "never any left".  If Oildown is available on the menu, that is what the Grenadians have.  Unfortunately for Andre who took us to Babe's we got the last three servings.  It was better than I expected. I'd heard about it; how you layer assorted meats or seafood, breadfruit or root crops, green bananas, yams, coconut milk and greens and stew it down until what remains is a savory stew with a coconut oil sauce.  I asked Babe how she made it and this is how she described it. She sauted the green spices: green onion, celery, thyme, possibly dill, and any assortment of green herbs, but very likely Shadon Be...