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hafoc
According to Hanschell Inniss Ltd., whose fine products I knew well when I was on the island of Barbados, rum punch is not a froufrou drink full of diced fruit and topped by a paper umbrella. The traditional recipe is "one sour, two sweet, three strong, four weak;" lime juice, sugar syrup, rum, and water respectively.
Of course I didn't know that when I was down there, so I just drank my rum any old way.
I was on the island when I was a graduate student. I spent several weeks there, in August no less, trying to map the structural geology of an accretionary prism. That's what Barbados is, the exposed part of an accretionary prism.
I'll skip the geology lesson. What it comes down to is you take a bulldozer the size of Cuba and let it heap up mountains of sediments made up (all too often) of quarter-inch layers of slightly different muds, each with about the structural integrity of Velveeta. Then you come back a few million years later and try to figure out the exact path and speed of the bulldozer by mapping the crumples in the mess.
Evenings we would retire to the tiny veranda (over the garage) of the house we rented, facing the Atlantic Ocean across a narrow road and public beach. We'd kick back with beer, or perhaps a glass of rum and whatever else was handy. Coke, perhaps. If not that, any of an infinite number of local soda pops distinguished only by color, because they all came in identical bottles labeled "Bim." (Bim, Bajan, Barbadian, Barbados.)
Barbados is the island of rums with names that sound obscene but aren't. The one you see around here most of the time is Mount Gay, but we much preferred Cockspur, by Hanschell Inniss. The beer, alas, was stuck with the completely respectable name of Banks, but it was pretty OK beer anyway. Besides, it's all we could get.
For me, Island Fever came in the form of food cravings. They had fish, especially flying fish. They had zucchini and "spinach" that was actually leaves off some shrub. They had breadfruit for the taking (thank you, whoever took over from Captain Bligh after that first attempt to import the plants went so wrong), plantains, and little sour limes. But as far as my experience would say, any other food had to be imported.
Cheese, now. The only cheese we could find was a white cheddar imported from New Zealand. And I was going just about mad for the taste of tomato.
It got so bad that on our one trip to the western, tourist side of the island, we all just had to order pizza. And wouldn't you know it-- white cheese, and not enough tomato sauce to alter the thing's color in any measurable way.
One food they didn't have was crab. They had crabs, all right, but not to eat. The land crabs would come up onto the island at night and wander around. They must have been a foot and a half across, if you included the legs. You'd hear them walking on the asphalt road at night. They clicked.
I asked Mrs. Nichols if anybody ever ate the land crabs. "No, man. They taste TERRIBLE."
So crabs were out on that evening when the boss came over from the tourist side of the island, where he stayed, to our place on the Atlantic side. We wanted to come up with some special dinner for him. For ourselves, too.
Fortunately, the second-in-command (who on the island went by the name Fidel, because he was a white guy with a beard and wore a surplus army-green cap) was friends with one of the local fishermen. When the fisherman caught something special, we got first crack at it. Especially because we'd pay premium prices; ten cents Bajan a pound. That was about a nickel US at the time.
We had some huge fish. We cut slices across it, and each one was an adult-sized serving. We cooked it in that yellow Bajan pepper sauce I can't find around here.
I contributed "asparagus." I HATE asparagus, but I'd become so hungry for anything other than zucchini and pseudo-spinach that I came up with the idea of baking zucchini spears in exotic imported Campbell's Condensed Cream of Asparagus Soup. We also had a salad made of pseudo-spinach and a few shreds of imported carrot. We'd learned not to cook the "spinach" by then, since it disintegrated into green slime when you did.
But the piece de resistance was the rum punch.
We didn't think to ask why the rum cost more when we bought it that day. When we got it home we found out. The Cockspur Rum label had a little red tag at its top, the size and color of a Levi's Jeans tag. OVERPROOF, it said, which meant the alcohol content was Oh My God.
"Besht rum punch ever. Yoush guys really know how to cook."
Indeed.
I have a talent for misery, but I can look back on that experience and honestly say I enjoyed it. Even back then, not just looking back. I was busy as hell, and trying to arrange a normal life in a place that was not normal for me was a lot of work too. But I enjoyed it, and I'm glad I went.
I get Cockspur rum when I can find it. Mix it with a little water and an indeterminate amount of sweetened lime juice, and call it good. I sip it and think of distant places past, and of distant places perhaps yet to come.
Of course I didn't know that when I was down there, so I just drank my rum any old way.
I was on the island when I was a graduate student. I spent several weeks there, in August no less, trying to map the structural geology of an accretionary prism. That's what Barbados is, the exposed part of an accretionary prism.
I'll skip the geology lesson. What it comes down to is you take a bulldozer the size of Cuba and let it heap up mountains of sediments made up (all too often) of quarter-inch layers of slightly different muds, each with about the structural integrity of Velveeta. Then you come back a few million years later and try to figure out the exact path and speed of the bulldozer by mapping the crumples in the mess.
Evenings we would retire to the tiny veranda (over the garage) of the house we rented, facing the Atlantic Ocean across a narrow road and public beach. We'd kick back with beer, or perhaps a glass of rum and whatever else was handy. Coke, perhaps. If not that, any of an infinite number of local soda pops distinguished only by color, because they all came in identical bottles labeled "Bim." (Bim, Bajan, Barbadian, Barbados.)
Barbados is the island of rums with names that sound obscene but aren't. The one you see around here most of the time is Mount Gay, but we much preferred Cockspur, by Hanschell Inniss. The beer, alas, was stuck with the completely respectable name of Banks, but it was pretty OK beer anyway. Besides, it's all we could get.
For me, Island Fever came in the form of food cravings. They had fish, especially flying fish. They had zucchini and "spinach" that was actually leaves off some shrub. They had breadfruit for the taking (thank you, whoever took over from Captain Bligh after that first attempt to import the plants went so wrong), plantains, and little sour limes. But as far as my experience would say, any other food had to be imported.
Cheese, now. The only cheese we could find was a white cheddar imported from New Zealand. And I was going just about mad for the taste of tomato.
It got so bad that on our one trip to the western, tourist side of the island, we all just had to order pizza. And wouldn't you know it-- white cheese, and not enough tomato sauce to alter the thing's color in any measurable way.
One food they didn't have was crab. They had crabs, all right, but not to eat. The land crabs would come up onto the island at night and wander around. They must have been a foot and a half across, if you included the legs. You'd hear them walking on the asphalt road at night. They clicked.
I asked Mrs. Nichols if anybody ever ate the land crabs. "No, man. They taste TERRIBLE."
So crabs were out on that evening when the boss came over from the tourist side of the island, where he stayed, to our place on the Atlantic side. We wanted to come up with some special dinner for him. For ourselves, too.
Fortunately, the second-in-command (who on the island went by the name Fidel, because he was a white guy with a beard and wore a surplus army-green cap) was friends with one of the local fishermen. When the fisherman caught something special, we got first crack at it. Especially because we'd pay premium prices; ten cents Bajan a pound. That was about a nickel US at the time.
We had some huge fish. We cut slices across it, and each one was an adult-sized serving. We cooked it in that yellow Bajan pepper sauce I can't find around here.
I contributed "asparagus." I HATE asparagus, but I'd become so hungry for anything other than zucchini and pseudo-spinach that I came up with the idea of baking zucchini spears in exotic imported Campbell's Condensed Cream of Asparagus Soup. We also had a salad made of pseudo-spinach and a few shreds of imported carrot. We'd learned not to cook the "spinach" by then, since it disintegrated into green slime when you did.
But the piece de resistance was the rum punch.
We didn't think to ask why the rum cost more when we bought it that day. When we got it home we found out. The Cockspur Rum label had a little red tag at its top, the size and color of a Levi's Jeans tag. OVERPROOF, it said, which meant the alcohol content was Oh My God.
"Besht rum punch ever. Yoush guys really know how to cook."
Indeed.
I have a talent for misery, but I can look back on that experience and honestly say I enjoyed it. Even back then, not just looking back. I was busy as hell, and trying to arrange a normal life in a place that was not normal for me was a lot of work too. But I enjoyed it, and I'm glad I went.
I get Cockspur rum when I can find it. Mix it with a little water and an indeterminate amount of sweetened lime juice, and call it good. I sip it and think of distant places past, and of distant places perhaps yet to come.
