From the category archives:

BVI Farmers and Produce

What’s In A Name?

March 3, 2010

Or to rephrase the question, when you’re making a “traditional” recipe, how far can you stray from the original and still call a dish by name? Like most cooks, I set my own (often shifting) parameters. And my parameters may waver more than yours because of my location and the unavailability of certain ingredients and equipment. I’ve run across more [...]

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Spicy Caribbean Gumbo

February 20, 2010

The Caribbean, land of perpetual summer. But we do have seasons – and not just hurricane season and tourist season (which reminds me of a fridge magnet someone once sent us…”why is it called tourist season if we can’t shoot at ‘em?”) This time of year, the heat of the day is tempered by wonderfully cool nights when [...]

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Mystery Gourd

February 14, 2010

Bones bought these pretty gourds from one of the farmers exhibiting at BVI Farmers’ Week last Saturday. The farmer called them snake gourds but didn’t offer any direction on how to prepare them (assuming they are indeed edible).

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Pumpkin Soup

September 30, 2009

Some foods are forever linked to the place you first ate them or first cooked them. For me, pumpkin soup stirs up memories of St. Lucia. I spent three weeks in St. Lucia in early 1993, not entirely by design. I blame it on Northern Magic.

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Tepache: Tropical Pineapple Fizz

June 18, 2009

“As the Prada handbag of the 18th century, a real-life, homegrown pineapple was a powerful status symbol, so much so that it was extremely unusual to eat the fruit.” Or so says Fran Beauman in her book, The Pineapple: King of Fruits. The Australians must agree because the government of Queensland sent the future Queen Elizabeth 500 [...]

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Pumpkin Ravioli

June 8, 2009

I was thrilled to get an email from Federica asking if I wanted to join in a series of lunchtime cooking sessions with a few other like-minded women who enjoy cooking and eating. The sessions would be based on “the flavor choice and cooking experience that you want to share with everyone else…each one prepares [...]

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Fede’s Farm

May 14, 2009

Federica drives like an Italian: fast and fearless. At least I think she does since I couldn’t actually keep up with her. We left yoga class at Mount Healthy and took the twisting, turning, mountainous Ridge Road to Federica’s home overlooking Cooper Bay. Federica led the way and I followed, made brave by the promise of fresh arugula and aged parmigiano reggiano flown in from [...]

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Eggplant Choka

April 30, 2009

Every so often I am overcome with an overwhelming urge to grow something. Usually it is best to ignore such urges because I am, it seems, cursed with a brown thumb. Or perhaps a yellow thumb. Moviene Fahie grew the beautiful purple, eggplant-colored eggplants above. I, alas, grew the urine-colored yellow specimen…yet another gardening failure to add [...]

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Steve Martin’s Breakfast

April 16, 2009

In the fairly recent (and fairly boring) movie “Baby Mama”, Steve Martin plays an obnoxious new-agey type with a ponytail. At one point, his character brags about eating papaya on the beach at Virgin Gorda. I would bet there aren’t twelve people who saw the film that have ever heard of Virgin Gorda, much less know where [...]

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Moviene Day

April 9, 2009

This morning I took Audrey to meet my new best friend, Moviene Fahie. Moviene has a vegetable farm in Paraquita Bay and sets up shop every Friday at the roundabout in Road Town. Visiting Moviene to see what’s fresh is my new Friday ritual and I always come away with some first-rate, locally grown, organic produce. And [...]

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Lesson Learned

April 6, 2009

Cream of Breadfruit and Green Papaya Soup

Being fairly new to the whole housewife thing, I felt all warm and June Cleaverish when Bones told me at nine o’clock last night that he’d invited a work colleague over to a lunch meeting at noon today. Until I remembered I am not June Cleaver and had nothing to feed two strapping men. Peanut butter [...]

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