7/3/08
Dairy Products
Another great thing about staying here during the summer, when the majority of the students go home, is that the supermarket always has plenty of fresh milk, eggs, and butter in stock. Hooray!
Pretty much everything you would consume here has to get shipped in from other places, and refrigerated shipping is extra-expensive. As a result, most people living here grew up without fresh milk (because of not having a refrigerator at home or lack of access to fresh milk at the store). Much of the Grenadian population still drinks ultra-high-temperature (UHT) pasturized milk, like Dutch Lady, or uses powered milk. There are also what seem to be thousands of different types of margarine sold here that I’ve never heard of before. However, there’s only one brand of butter and one brand of fresh milk, and a limited amount are shipped in each week.
Aside: Some people on the island still don’t have electricity and many don’t have hot water service to their house. In fact, a lot of our friends don’t have hot water in their apartments, and so their landlords will install an electrical contraption on their shower head which will warm the water, but it will also throw off shocks from time to time. This is another reason why we love and appreciate our landlords. We have hot water, but there’s never quite enough with four people sharing one boiler. So, a couple of months after we got here, they installed a water warmer (much like the ones we saw in India). You just turn it on about 15 minutes before you take a shower and VOILA! All the hot water you could ask for is available to you. End Aside.
The majority of the (more than 2,000) students at SGU drink fresh milk and eat butter. This means that, more often than not, when I go to the grocery store, there is a big empty shelf where the butter or milk would usually be (and sometimes the eggs are sold out as well). If I time my shopping trip correctly, I can usually get fresh milk 2 or 3 times a month. But it only takes a day or so for the market to sell out, so we try to conserve the milk we buy and not use it too quickly. When the students are around, there is never milk available if you go back to get more.
Also, the only market on the island that has fresh milk and butter available (luckily) is the one that is closest to our house where most of the students go to shop. So really, once the milk is gone from there, there is no more fresh milk available in the country until the next milk boat comes in. Whenever that is.
Other times, we make do with UHT milk and I stockpile butter in the freezer (I really dislike the taste of margarine, and it’s hard to cook with). UHT milk is fine for making a bowl of cold cereal, but drinking a glass of it is not tasty at all–I think it would take me a while to get used to it.
Summertime means no competition for fresh dairy products, and I can drink a delicious, cold glass of milk whenever I want to, and not worry about running out, because whenever I go to the store there will always be more.
6/16/08
Barracuda
We went to a barbecue last night, and they grilled a whole barracuda after marinating it in garlic. It was possibly the best fish I have ever eaten in my entire life. Perfectly juicy and tender!
The guys who cooked it told us that in many places, it’s dangerous to eat them. This is because the barracuda mostly eat smaller fish, and in turn ingest higher rates of toxins that the smaller fish have picked up from in polluted waters.
Luckily, we are in Grenada, where the barracuda are safe, plentiful, and delicious.
6/16/08
Fish Friday
We try to get to Fish Friday as often as possible, but since we don’t have a car, and it only happens on Friday nights (when there aren’t as many buses), and it’s a substantial cab ride from our house (much cheaper when a whole group of people split the cost), we’ve only been twice.
Fish Friday is a wonderful event that happens every Friday of the year, except for Good Friday, in the fishing village of Gouyave. Though Gouyave is only about 15 miles from where we live, it takes about 45 minutes to get there. The length of time really attests to just how hilly and windy most of the roads in Grenada are.
It starts just after dark, and goes until all of the food is gone–usually around midnight. There are always about 30 stalls set up, and all of the food is cooked on site, so it smells just fantastic. Each cook has a menu of 4-5 types of fish dishes and sides, and the variety among the stalls is pretty impressive; there is always something new to try.
Some of my favorites so far have been :
- Conch Pizza
- Lambie Waters (conch soup)
- Crab Curry
- Garlic Grilled Lobster
- Tuna Kabobs
- Fish and Bake (fried fish on a biscuit)
One of the best parts of Fish Friday (other than the eating) is the fact that pretty much everything there is fantastically cheap. Even a whole grilled lobster is only about $12US!
The best thing to drink with all of this is of course ice cold Carib beer, which goes well with everything and is always cheap and plentiful (as an aside, there’s a brewery about 5 minutes from our house, and when you walk down the street adjacent to it, it sort of smells like moldy urine).
6/10/08
Fast Food
There is almost no American Fast Food on the island. Isn’t that amazing? I thought every country in the world had been beaten into submission by McDonalds.
The only Fast Food restaurant that’s made it here is KFC. And I believe there are only 2 of them.
So, one day when I made the (always stupid) decision to go grocery shopping on an empty stomach, I ended up going there to get a spicy chicken sandwich.
It was pretty darn yummy, and extra special because they made it with the local lettuce and tomatoes, which are the best we’ve ever had anywhere.
I do not plan to make eating at KFC a habit, though.
