Dining in the Natural Mystic

The best meal ever!

My Dear Gourmet Squatters, I missed you. I recently lost my granny and have been pretty sad. If you’ve been reading Gourmet Squatter for a while now, you know how much I love my granny. God blessed her with 104 chapters of life, but still my family and I weep and rejoice for the departure of our beloved matriarch. So I recently returned from granny’s send-off celebration, and Folks, you’re not ready. On the day before the funeral, the mountains burst with the smell of roasting goats’ heads for manish water and smoky boar’s flesh for jerk pork (I really hope none of you are vegans). My mother says the pork skin has the best flavor, and it does.  A large tent was set as the village cooks hung, cut, and seasoned. The meats were roasted on tree barks and aged pits as the men bickered and puffed themselves into lives they wished they had. Music seemed to grow from the ground—everything from Bob’s “Natural Mystic” to songs I had never heard before like, “One Woman Cannot Satisfy Me.” But I was satisfied as I watched children leap from steep hills and run around the curvaceous earth. My favorite meal was a plate of steamed white rice, steamed callaloo seasoned with gorgeously green, long scallion stalks, onion, salt, pepper, and the juice from the escovitch fish my mom purchased from Old Harbour Bay. The meal was an ode to Jamaican culture--spicy, sweet and fresh. When darkness finally draped the land, a live band arrived and white rum flowed from the clouds as we danced, cried and drank to granny.