Thoughts of a minibus traveller

The man in Bourda Market said 'duh is ortanique' - pointing to the tangerine shaped fruit which was kind of hard.  I remember in high school reading about 'ortanique' being a Jamaican fruit and always wondering what it was thinking it was a graft of orange and tangerine. Apparently though "The origin of this attractive and promising variety is unknown, but Ortanique is reported (Anonymous, 1963) to be an old chance seedling that came to the attention of C. P. Jackson of Chellaston, Mandeville, Jamaica, in 1920.  He is said to have grown 130 seedlings from it, of which about 40 per cent resembled the parent fruits, and to have selected those which he considered best.       Because of the presence of wild orange and so-called tangerine trees in the vicinity of the original tree and the distinctive features of the fruit, it was considered to be a natural tangor and was given the name Ortanique by H. H. Cousins, a former Director of Ag...

  Horses There is a herd of horses which roams around Subryanville. It is nice to see them. I am cautious around them as they might jump and run.  I have a feeling they would run from me more than running towards me. The only annoying thing is when they leave their droppings in the middle of the bridge. That is about as much I could write about horses in Guyana. Not many people would write about horses in Guyana. Nikita Blair though, wrote (and photographed) about observing the empathy of horses near where she lived. The story of a dead horse and the surviving foal might not have been published anywhere else except on a blog. Moray House Trust hosted an event "The Fifth Estate : a sample of blogs in Guyana".   A kind of offline event about writing online. Four bloggers shared some of the things they wrote. Nikita shared her piece on horses, with an additional treat of a slideshow of beautiful photographs.  Sara Bharrat read about an old man's tired e...

Mind in a whirl over the things I used to do which I can't do properly and I go looking for a distraction to see if I could cook something different. Mind is on baigan and channa - not curry and figuring out if there are things which people do with them. Thanks to Google and the bloggers - I learn about the "eggplant and chick pea " stew from the Middle East. Two recipes - Maghmour from Lebanon and Mnazeleh - a recipe from a Druze family look good though I know I am not going to pan-fry the baigan or light up oven just to roast the baigan slices. The lady who I got mint from in Mon Repos market was not there so I thought alright.. I will use thyme - the thick-leaf one and the fine-leave one. Salting the baigan  Some people say to slice up, chop up the eggplant/baigan and put salt and leave one side in a colander so that some moisture could come out. I did that and it was something else to see. You have to wash out the salt though before you cook. Some p...

Rain is falling and only one man is selling pineapple and I know that rainy weather pineapple is not always sweet.  So I think all right, let me taste and if it not sweet I will make pineapple curr y - a long time after I saw a woman post about making it after she ate it in a restaurant.  Thanks to Facebook. The Internet throws up a set of recipes and I realise of course that I will have to try my own thing. Some recipes talk about boiling pineapple first, some talk about using coconut milk, some don't use coconut milk. Pineapple I cut the pineapple in chunks - some have recipes for slices. Some talk about boiling the pineapple first. But I cut the pineapple in chunks and then when I realise that the pineapple does not really soften as it boils.. that I should cut into smallish pieces. Next time. The curry So of course experts will have bottles of different things and make up their own masala as it goes. Khali leaves, curry leaves, this kind pepper,  geera, e...