When cruisers go out hunting and gathering for food in some Caribbean islands, It’s not always the same as back home.
You know where you leave home with your list of what you need to buy, get in your car and drive to the local supermarket, where you park your car in the carpark. Then wheel your trolley through the aisles, picking up the things you plan to eat over the coming week, carefully checking the food labels for unwanted additives, pay with your credit card at the checkout and drive back home to put your goodies in the fridge.
Well here in the rainy season in Grenada, it’s a little different.
Sure, we leave our boat at anchor and drive to the “market” and park, Jenny’s Farmer’s Market to be precise, every Wednesday morning at 10 o’clock. We queue-up in an orderly fashion and promptly discuss the weather or course, the recent beach BBQ or the last Open Mic Night at Nimrod’s Rum Shop, while we wait our turn at the market tables.
There aren’t so many aisles to navigate with trolleys, while checking off all the things on your list, as wait and see what the gods have in store for us this week. Pick up anything that looks good, grab the last papaya and some lovely fresh eggs laid by Jenny’s 15 chickens and ask the other cruisers and locals, how to cook the unfamiliar vegetable that you have opted for, in lieu of the vegies you bought last week, but someone else got there first.
There’s defiantly no need to label check here. No labels and no additives at all, just organic local produce and home-made juices, jams, cakes and ice-cream. When Jenny has totted up what you have just shoved into your shopping bag or backpack, by eye (not scales to hold things up) we pay cash in the local currency and slip off for a coffee at another table in the cruiser’s bar.
I survey my spoils at my side, but no rush back to the boat as it was all picked fresh this morning and there is lots of news to catch up on with our friends, who have just arrived in the same bay. Food shopping here is more of a social event than checking off a list. I never know what will be available, we just learn to embrace what’s on offer.