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.

Gruet: Pink on the Inside

Pink was never my color. It’s not that I’m not a girly-girl. I just never connected to its implications—female conformity, tears and babies. But today I had a pink-moment. I had a student who arrived in my class today in a wheelchair. He was in his mid-20s, and there was a bloody box around his foot. It’s not that I’ve never had wheelchair-bound students in my class before, but this young man moved me for some reason. My classroom set-up isn’t ADA-compliant, yet this man navigated through the tight space like he had wings. He was so determined to learn--raising his hands and answering questions despite the eyes that were crawling up and down his leg. I later learned that he had kidney failure, and each time I looked in his eyes I became soft like the Gruet Brut Rosé. It’s rusty pink color reminds me of how I feel sometimes—weary, hard and longing. Its strawberry, raspberry aromas and Shirley Temple-esque flavors remind me of that girly-girl who wants so desperately to run through tight spaces then fly. P.S. I spent $10 for the half-bottle.

Freedom in Bubbles

First I apologize to my Gourmet Squatter readers for being absent all this time. I just took on a rat race-gig that has consumed much of my miscellaneous energy. Still, it’s no excuse. But I’m back and grateful to be frolicking on the page. What have you been up to lately? What have you been eating and sipping? On this great day when we celebrate freedom, I’m sipping Graham Beck Brut Pinot Noir Chardonnay. I started sipping it yesterday, immediately picking up a funky, morbier cheese aroma at the frothy rim. Then the aromas evolved into freshly mown grass, apple crisp and cantaloupe. On the palate there’s Gala apple crisp and lemon drop with a burst of minerality at the finish. For $17, it was pretty good. I have one of those fancy wine stoppers specifically for sparkling wines, so today while the wine maintains its carbonation, it tastes more like an upscale Cava. It’s perfect for fish fry picnics, poolside gossip and lazy days away from the rat race.    

Anonymous Affairs in Sunday Gravy

I’ve watched “Under the Tuscan Sun” about 1000 times. I’m not kidding. I know. It’s sad. But when I’m craving anonymity (It’s hard to be anonymous when you have a multisyllabic name most people never heard of), I retreat into this world of olives, wine, broken hearts, and mended mojos. Since I was in Tuscany, I decided to make some cellentani I found in the pantry. I was going for a Pasta e Fagioli, but it turned into something much heartier. The spirit was speaking to me—“Add carrots, green peppers, thyme, and scallion. Don’t grate too much Parmigiano-Reggiano.” Someone gave my mother a Walmart gift card for the holidays, which she passed on to me, so I grabbed a jar of the DelGrosso Sunday Marinara. I’m a sucker for those rustic labels, and this bottle was exactly what I expected—wonderfully savory and light unlike the usual sugary marinara sauces most of us, faux-Italians, are accustomed to. I cheated on my vegan non-boyfriend and sautéed a quarter pound of organic ground beef. In the end, it was like an unplanned affair under the anonymous moon.   

Scent of A Sipper

This past week has been littered with bodies. It’s like the earth is regurgitating, and people are just falling into the next life. Did you hear about the Jamaican family—mother, father, baby and grandmother who were fatally injured in a car recent car accident? So sad. To these stories, my father often replies, “What is man?” The bible likens man’s life to that of a blade of grass. How quickly we forget.  How quickly we become guest stars in our own lives. How quickly we become dreams deferred. And so I choose to live. No matter how difficult the artist road may be, I live for the chase, for the next meal, the next gathering of friends, the next bundle of laughter, and the aromas bursting from vineyards I’ve yet to visit. I remember when I used to lock myself in my room and just dance and dance for hours—New Edition, Cherelle, Michael Jackson, Def Leopard, and Pat Benatar blaring from my speakers. I held all the secrets of an earthly paradise right there in my Toshiba boombox. Today, I summon that girl, that sweet, dream-juicy girl to keep dancing, sipping, living.