Fifth Ingredient: Caribbean Cuisine

Ingredient Five: Caribbean Cuisine

Hey Miss Callaloo here.

So this is the last ingredient you need to complete your callaloo. As everyone knows the best food comes from the Caribbean, and you may ask why am i being bias. I am so because we are passionate about what we cook, how we cook it and what we add to make it taste the best.🍅🍠🍖

Caribbean food includes all the favorite seafood, chicken, and steak, prepared with the spices and colorful ingredients of the Islands. The Arawak, Carib, and Taino “Indians” were the first dwellers in the Caribbean Islands. Their daily diet consists of vegetables and fruits such as papaya, yams, guavas, and cassava. The Taino began the process of preparing meat and fish in large clay pots. The moment the Europeans brought in African slaves to the region, the Caribbean became the crossroads to the world. The slaves’ diet mostly is full of food the slave owners did not want to eat, so the slaves had to be inventive, and they blended their traditional African foods with staple foods found on the islands. The Africans introduced okra, callaloo, fish cakes, salt-fish, ackee, pudding, and mangoes, etc. Today, most Caribbean Island natives eat a diet that is of these main ingredients found in original African dishes. (Caribbean Food; it's history, origin and popularity around the world, 2020)

After the end of slavery, the indentured labourers from India and china introduced their own style of cuisine. The Chinese launched rice and mustard, and the early Portuguese sailors are responsible for adding the famous codfish. Spain brought in fruit trees like orange, ginger, plantains, figs, date palms, sugar cane, grapes, tamarinds and coconuts, and The Americas introduced beans, corn, squash, potatoes, tomatoes, and chilli pepper. (Caribbean Food; it's history, origin and popularity around the world, 2020)

Some favourite Caribbean delicacies; seasoned jerk chicken, a dish, Jamaica is very fond of. Chicken, goat, beef and curry  were and still continue to be a dish many Caribbean people enjoy eating, especially Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. 

Goat stew is a national dish recognized in Montserrat and very popular in St. Nevis and Kitts. This famous stew consists of tomatoes, dumplings, green papaya, breadfruit, and goat meat. In the British Caribbean, a memorable meal is a pelau, a mixture of salt fish, beef, and chicken meat with rice, pigeon peas, and other vegetables. Callaloo, a prominent African influenced Caribbean dish, combines leafy greens with okra.(Caribbean Food; it's history, origin and popularity around the world, 2020)

The Spanish influenced the Caribbean in many ways, especially in spicy and flavoured foods, by using many different spices and leaves to add to their dishes. Now seafood is most common, being surrounded by water, the Caribbean offers a variety of seafood. It has its own unique way of cooking this delicacy. Shark, fish, lobster, conch shell and most loved shrimp and crab, are seasoned and cooked to each persons liking. For example, fried shark or even curried crab fish is a favorite delicacy in Trinidad and Tobago. Rice is very common in the Caribbean as it can be served many different ways, in different Caribbean countries rice can be stir fried with a lot of vegetables, it can be boiled with saffron powder to give it a yellow colour then added with raisins and chives. People mostly decorate to add a a little festivity or colour to the dish and other people just love it to be served as a tasty side to their dish.

  

Caribbean cuisine is very popular and will continue to be favoured as the best type of food because of its taste, variety and flavour.

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You have finally created your Caribbean Callaloo, all these ingredient each play hand in hand with each other, as they play a significant role in the Caribbean. by giving us our identity, our culture, and making us united as one

FOR NOW ALL I CAN SAY ABOUT THE CARIBBEAN IS THAT WE ARE TRULY ONE.

WE ARE A CALLALOO........

Fourth Ingredient: Religion

Ingredient Four: Religion

How's the callaloo coming along?  Do you think you have ALL the ingredients  now to make this Caribbean callaloo.

When it comes to religion, the Caribbean is dominated by Christianity. However, many different  cultural adaptations of Christianity can be found throughout the islands. From the religions of slaves and indentured servants to styles developed on the islands themselves, the Caribbean is full of a vibrant variety of faiths. (The Caribbean Religion | Caribya!, 2020)

  The Spanish and French were devout Roman Catholics, while the British were Protestants so they formed their own religion under the church of England. Irish migrants from Britain brought Catholicism with them as well, and the Dutch brought both Catholicism and Dutch Reform beliefs. (The Caribbean Religion | Caribya!, 2020). 

 While slaves were still under most of these colonies they would've adapted to all of their ways including their religion, Christianity. These Caribbean countries were made known to this and thus stuck with it since it was the most dominant religious style in the region, but local religions also play an important role in the Caribbean.

In the Caribbean there are many religions. It's true, that religion comes in all varieties in many  Caribbean countries, since slaves and indentured labourers were brought to the islands to work they also brought  their faiths with them. Slaves from Africa brought their own religious and spiritual beliefs and practices paved a way for a new religion for many people, even slaves that were bred in the Caribbean were claimed to the christian faith. The East Indian indentured labourers also brought in their own spiritual beliefs and practices into the region. 

Almost one quarter of the population of Trinidad and Tobago is Hindu  one of the highest concentrations of Hindu people in the world. Small populations of Jews and Muslims also live in the Caribbean.(The Caribbean Religion | Caribya!, 2020)

After the abolishment of slavery, several years passed and Caribbean people forged their own religions for example, Rastafarianism, similar to Christianity but with a flavour of Caribbean style.

This pro-African religion uses the Bible as its base text but takes a decidedly different reading than that of more traditional Christian sects. Like many things Jamaican, it also stands out for political and social causes.it also is found in Trinidad and Tobago. (The Caribbean Religion | Caribya!, 2020)

Hinduism observed by practicing Hindus as they follow particular Gods. Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Seven Days Adventist, Shouter Baptist, Jehovah Witness and Muslims and many more religions all fall in line with the Caribbeans diversity as it accepts all beliefs and practices from their followers.

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Third Ingredient: Tradition and Customs

Ingredient three: Tradition and Customs

Miss callaloo here, adding another ingredient to this amazing pot of callaloo.

Tradition and customs🎵🏰👳.

Traditions and customs gives each and every Caribbean an identity that sustains any social group over the course of historic changes. The customs that have been passed down from generations finds a way to come into society, things  like entertainment, arts and crafts, rituals and festivals are some attachments that stems from ancestors and is succeeded generation after generation.

This is despite the indisputable relationships the islands have with the countries that colonized them, which has led each island to try to preserve its language, artistic forms and customs. The climate of the Caribbean archipelago may be one of the decisive factors that have molded cultural expressions such as the music, social customs.(Caribbean Traditions and Customs - Caribbean | EnciclopediaPR, 2020)

At the same time, language is an integral part of any culture and its forms shape the outlines of a country’s traditions. For example, there have been efforts of various kinds to prevent the disappearance of Creole which arrived with the African slaves and grew from a combination of African and European languages in the face of official languages such as French.

Awareness of the Creole language, however, has penetrated literary trends, linguistics and university specializations in places such as Martinique which has kept the language vibrant among those who speak it. French Creole is used in places such as Haiti, Guadeloupe, Dominica and St. Lucia. It remains alive even as its particular variations are spoken as distinctive elements  of Caribbean traditions.(Caribbean Traditions and Customs - Caribbean | EnciclopediaPR, 2020)

Although in Caribbean countries they observe their own  traditions and customs with everyone, 

families choose to have their own private tradition and customs that have been carried on by their ancestors and passed on from generation.

Traditions like fasting for a month in respect for their ancestors, or preparing a day worth of meals hand prepared by the entire family. These are just some of the practices families do to follow their own tradition and customs, another one would be developing their own values and mores as they believe that certain things shouldn't be followed in their household or whatever it may be they might turn away from.

                                                                                        

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Second Ingredient: Identity and Ethnicity

Ingredient Two: Identity and Ethnicity in the Caribbean

Miss callaloo here, adding another ingredient to this callaloo

Have you ever wondered where do we all come from? In the Caribbean that is. We all have identities, and backgrounds that make up for our identity.

Caribbean people before us were able to design an identity that they can call their own.

An ‘ethno-local’ identity pervaded all parts of the Caribbean conferring not only uniqueness to the region but to separate clusters of settlement, all constructed on a familiar landscape and history of slavery, indenture, and plantations. Caribbean identity has now been forged by both residents in the Caribbean and those overseas attesting to the truism that to survive in the global present requires simultaneity in several spaces. While this schizophrenic split at one time described only a small Caribbean group overseas, today it applies with few exceptions to practically every home, village, and township throughout the Caribbean. In whatever combinations of race, religion, language, and culture they cohere and co-exist, they dwell on small islands and large, some poorly endowed with natural resources, others abundantly so. Perhaps, no other region of the world is so richly varied

(Lewis,2011)

Now from all that we can gather that the Caribbean is very rich with many varieties of ethnicity. Although it brings us together as a whole, we are somehow divided into each unique parts which can create something beautiful. Whether you have some background of Chinese, French, Syrian, Lebanese, Indian, African or Spanish, this is what makes up this lovely pot, callaloo, The Caribbean.

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First Ingredient: Caribbean Culture

Ingredient One: Caribbean Culture.

I'm just a girl trying to understand my Caribbean history 😅

What does my name Miss Callaloo mean, if you ask? I am a mixture of all things Caribbean: religion, culture, heritage, history, race and family. That is what I am.

In today's Callaloo pot, I'm adding a touch of Caribbean culture.

Knowing the history of the Caribbean region goes a long way toward understanding its people. Each island has a unique cultural identity shaped by the European colonialists, the African heritage of slaves, and the enduring legacies of the native Indian tribes. This rich history and its lasting influence is set against a backdrop of crystal clear waters and perpetual sunshine. (Caribbean Culture | Caribya!, 2020)

Caribbean lifestyle is painted as a beautiful picture because of its rich flavour and culture. From the architecture, music, values, religions and rituals. They all have been made in a way specifically to match each Caribbean country's background and culture.

                                                                                               

    

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