Drinks are on me!

I would like to draw your attention to just 4 examples of drinks that Trinis enjoy: Carib beer, Sorrel, Mauby and Ponche de crème. Only 2 of these are traditionally non-alcoholic but, not necessarily so today, as there’s now Shandy Carib - Sorrel (1.2% alc.), and I had a Trini friend who made a very delicious red wine and sorrel sangria one Christmas. We Trinis find a way to make it boozy, no problem.

What is there to say about Carib? “A beer is a Carib”. “A real beer is Carib”.

Sorrel is Christmas in Trinidad. Sorrel drink is made with the idea of sharing with anyone and everyone whether at home or work during the Christmas season. The drink is made from heavily steeping the bright, red sepals of the sorrel plant (Hibiscus sabdariffa). Did you ever notice that boiling the sepals also cleans out the stains on your pot! Probably because of the acidity or tartness of the extract. The red color also stains your mother’s good counter-tops too! 

Boiling the sorrel and spice mixture

The brew contains the sorrel sepals, cinnamon, cloves, sugar and water of course. Some even add a little ginger and star anise too.

The final product - tart sorrel drink

Ponche de creme is a Christmas-time delight. It is milk-based and infused with strong rum or ‘Punchin’ (puncheon rum) for that added kick. Some say it’s the Trini version of Bailey’s Irish cream. But it’s highly spiced with nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, lime, vanilla, Angostura bitters and ‘punchin’ rum. Doesn’t sound like any Bailey’s to me!

Only a Trini can drink this and still stand up!

The issue now is in using raw eggs in the drink. Salmonella anyone? The alcohol content is said to destroy whatever bacteria may be in the raw eggs, so it’s safe to drink. Alternatively, you can simply omit the eggs, it’s up to you.

One thing is certain, however, the colder the crème, the better it tastes. So, on the rocks please!

Mauby is a delicious sweet drink again, made from a heavily steeped preparation of the tree bark of Colubrina arborescens. It reminds me of a slightly bitter, spiced ice- tea actually. 

On Charlotte Street, Port of Spain, you can find the bark sold in small packs as a “kit” if you like. The kit contains the mauby bark pieces along with the necessary spices to make the drink e.g. clove, aniseed, bay leaf, cinnamon sticks, and star anise. You can add some dried orange peel as well.

Dried mauby bark pieces

Boiling the mauby bark pieces with spices

The final product - a tall glass of cold mauby

Now, mauby is also sold as a concentrate where you just add water to get the intensity of flavour you prefer. Listen, nothing beats a glass of homemade cold, mauby. You cannot drink this slowly. Gulping it down is uncontrollable.

Brainfreeze is soooo good!

“Take a turn nah!” As a child, this was an exciting invitation for me to try my hand at churning homemade ice-cream. Some kind of wooden bucket, ice, and salt gives me ice-cream?? I am there!

Coconut ice-cream - look at that presentation!

I soon became wise to this invitation. Hours of hand-cranking bordered on breaking child labour laws! Of course the ice-cream turned out lumpy because somebody didn’t mix the custard powder properly in the milk. And so ended the magic… Too much hard work for lumpy ice-cream. I decided to leave the business of ice-cream making to the more knowledgeable.

An old ice-cream maker similar to the one I used as a child

No artificial flavours, colourings or preservatives in homemade ice-cream.

Homemade peanut ice-cream

There was Willie’s, Munch Kings, B’s homemade ice-cream to name a few of the bigger businesses. The late, Wilbur “Willie” Balgobin, turned a homemade ice cream cart business into a multi-million-dollar chain. It was founded in 1986. Katherine Bethel and her husband Anderson are the founders of B’s Homemade Ice-Cream and have been serving flavourful blends for 26 years like ginger coconut, passion fruit and beetroot.

The pail overflowing with ice-cream!

The Dreamy Creamy Ice Cream Company is a local family-owned company in San Fernando and distributes its ice cream throughout Trinidad. The company offers flavours like guava coconut, barbadine, soursop, lychee, lychee cherry ice, coconut-raisin, Nanas Nuts and Pina Colada.

There’s homemade nutmeg ice cream from Ms. Naomi's ice cream shop in L' Anse Noire, Toco, and Guinness ice cream from Mama's Homemade Ice Cream in St. James.

Coconut-mango ice-cream

Miss Babbsie’s homemade ice cream (Ms. Babbsie Ramlogan) in Cumana, Toco has offered creamy delicious ice-cream for the last 13 years. Her ice-cream is not just homemade, but made using the hand-cranked method. Miss. Babbsie can’t make enough ice-cream in her ice-cream parlour for her Saturday and Sunday customers.

Soursop ice-cream

Gail’s Ice Cream Shop (Ms. Gail Charles) on Matura Main Road is known by all venturing up on the north-east coast. Her ice cream is made from fresh fruits picked from her backyard garden maintained by her family.

Homemade ice-cream: in a cone or a cup? What is your favourite?

Trini punches pack a punch!

Why Trinis like punch so? It have box juice, tin juice and sweet drink…but no, a Styrofoam cup filled to the brim with a cold, frothy punch will do the trick. 

Perhaps you’ve already enjoyed many unique blends from your neighbourhood punch man. There’s Shaka’s punches in Marabella and Harry’s punch and Heavy D punch bar in Chaguanas and so on. 

The punch basics include peanut, barbadine, banana, and sea moss to unique flavours like papaya, soursop, wheat germ, Guinness, linseed and beetroot. Seriously? Linseed? Isn’t that what we use to polish the wood floor for Christmas??

Dried sea moss. It is actually Irish moss which grows on rocks close to the shore in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean sea. Like other sea vegetables, it is rich in iodine and other trace minerals and apparently has a number of health benefits. Sea moss is reputed to have certain ummm…enhancement properties among Caribbean men.

http://www.superfoods-for-superhealth.com/irish-moss.html

Barbadine or giant granadilla fruit – the health benefits range from lowering cholesterol and blood pressure to a possible bactericide? 

http://www.onlyfoods.net/giant-granadilla.html

Beetroot – amazing health benefits including being a powerful antioxidant (just look at that color!), and lowers blood pressure and improve blood flow in a matter of minutes. 

http://www.healthdietmedicine.com/health-benefits-of-beetroot/ 

Papaya punch made from papaya – the world’s healthiest food? 

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=47

Soursop – nature’s cancer cure or neurotoxin? 

http://www.cancercenter.com/discussions/blog/experts-caution-against-soursop/

In the Caribbean, many people believe in “bush medicine” as do people in several other cultures. Why take a tablet when you can drink a healthy, delicious freshly-made punch instead?

Smoothies have become a very popular fad in the US and elsewhere. But, we Trinis were on to the health benefits of the punch drink for a long time now.

The mystery of the Trinidad Red Solo

“What you drinking with that?”

“A red solo please”

It really doesn’t matter if you’re eating a roti, doubles, or even a hops bread and buljol…an ice cold red solo will wash it down just right! But to the die-hard Trini, the red solo must be in a heavy Solo glass bottle.

The red solo drink or red see-drink

Joseph Charles Bottling Works and Investments Ltd. - a local soft drink manufacturer in Trinidad produces the Red Solo - a red colored carbonated beverage that is popular in Trinidad. The company was founded by Joseph Charles, the son of a Punjabi father and a Martiniquan mother, and is currently owned by the Charles family.

The beginnings... with bread

Joseph Charles, the eventual founder of Joseph Charles Bottling Works and Investments Limited, first entered the business world as an employee in 1922. In that year, Joseph's parents moved from Icacos to Belle Vue (near Dibe in the hills behind St. James) with their six children. It was here that the young Joseph began working in a bakery on Queen Street in Port of Spain. He quickly moved up from baking bread to becoming a salesman, serving his customers by bike. It was at this point that Joseph's unusual entrepreneurial instincts began to take shape. He knew how to please his customers. He started keeping a policy of giving every customer who bought more than twelve loaves of bread one extra loaf free, from his own commission.

From bread to beverages

The move towards the soft drink industry began when Joseph discovered that there was a small, hand-operated soft drink factory for sale on Patna Street in St. James. He borrowed $100, combined it with his savings, and bought the factory. The brand name of the soft drink that was produced by the factory was 'Delaware Punch' and Joseph continued producing soft drinks under that brand name after the factory aquisition. The entire production system at that time was manually operated. This was what the process was like. Used and returned bottles would be hand-washed using a bottle brush. The imported syrup would be mixed by hand and measured out into bottles to be carbonated by manually inserting and removing a carbonator, after which the crown cork would be pulled down onto the bottle top.

World War II and the Solo brand

With World War II, there was a shortage of bottles, since the bottles were imported instead of being manufactured in Trinidad. Joseph became aware of a soft drink factory in Canada that was closing down. He bought the bottles from the Canadian factory and shipped them back to Trinidad. The brand name printed on these bottles was 'Solo' and the logo included a picture of a pilot drinking a soft drink after a solo flight. Joseph kept the brand name and design for the manufacture of his soft drinks with the traditional heavy Solo glass bottles. Joseph Charles got where he did not just by ingenuity, but by hard work. The work day began at 5:00 am so that by 5:30 am, trucks loaded with Solo beverages would be deployed to travel the rough, narrow roads of those days to deliver the soft drinks to groceries and shops island-wide.

So the red solo is as widely known across Trinidad as the red TTT logo shown in the picture above.

But what’s the magic? Why the need for it once you’re eating roti?? I mean there’s home favourites like Cream soda, Banana and Apple J which is tart, refreshing and loaded with pure apple juice for goodness sake! Perhaps the need for a red solo with roti or bread is embedded in the history of its creation which was preceded by bread?

I tried looking up the ingredients for red solo and came up empty-handed. So I can only conclude that it is in fact sweet, red, fizzy magic when paired with roti or hops bread. Speaking of hops bread now……

Snow cone... with or without condensed milk?

Picture it: It’s scorching hot, you just finished cross the stage and dying for something sweet and cold to rejuvenate you because you need to keep going until the police gets you out of Port of Spain….a snow cone will hit the spot!

Or: The bell just rang which means school just finish and time to travel home but, a little 25cent snow cone would hit the spot before fighting your way through the Croissee to get a taxi.

But where?? Where to find this Trini treat? Ahhh…the snow cone man in his converted bicycle snow cone trolley, complete with a myriad of coloured sweet syrups and the tin of condensed milk. Herein lies the question: with or without condensed milk?

Long time the snow cone would come in a plain white or blue and white polka dot paper cone as shown in the picture above. It used to also be known as “shave ice”. You would ask the snow cone man for a straw so that you can pump the ice in the syrup to turn it into slushy goodness which will then be devoured. The red syrup will inevitably end up staining your cheeks and dripping all over the once white school shirt but what happens next usually involves licks and is another story entirely…!

Snoopy snow cone machine

As a child I didn’t care for the sweetened condensed milk as this just got in the way of me seeing the rainbow colored syrups. The colors mesmerized me. Which tasted better? The blue one? The red one? The yellow one? All the colors mixed?

I remember in 1981, I got a Snoopy Snow Cone Machine one Christmas after begging my life away. The ad on TV promised hours of snow cone making fun and I had to have it. It turned out to be a paltry substitute for the real snow cone man around the savannah or just outside the school yard. There was barely enough shaved ice to fill a tablespoon, much less a whole cup. And it was a nightmare to crank the turn shaft to shave the ice! No, it wasn’t the “Same with a Snoopy Snow Cone machine”!

As for condensed milk or not, I found that adults tend to go for the condensed milk, but I still don’t.

Lord Melody, preserves some of the Trini street cries of the day in his song entitled “The Ice Man”:-

”Street cry in the city really does amuse me!”

“Plantain to boil and fry! Plantain to boil and fry!”

“Bottles! Bottles! Bottles! Lady any bottles today!”

“But the nicest cry of them all, is when I hear the ice man bawl: Ice! Ice! Cold ice! Hard ice! All kind a ice!”