I recently had a "duh" moment when something occured to me that should have.....

[EarnestPutz]

....been obvious. A doctor that I had contact with was from Trinidad and Tobago and was of Indian descent. Like most people who have immigrated here, he was happy to talk about his homeland and compare noted on my travels in the Caribbean. When we talked about food, he suggested some curry dishes that one should try, explaining that "overseas" Indians had been in the Caribbean for 400 years and had contributed to island cuisine. Why this is true, the origins of Jamaican Curry dishes, had never occurred to me, was my "duh" moment.

[Irish_Dem]

1. I love curry, and eat Japanese and Indian style curries. But not Jamaican.

I will have to find some recipes.

[EarnestPutz]

3. It's different, usually sweeter than Indian curries. I have a great cookbook called....

...."Curry Cuisine" that includes India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Africa, Caribbean, Japan and even Great Britain as having developed distinctive curry dishes.

[Irish_Dem]

5. Yes, good point. I have had Thai and VN curry too.

I prefer Japanese and Indian curry so far.
Will have to try Jamaican and some of the others you mention.

[IcyPeas]

2. this is a great post. shows how you can learn from people from different parts of the world!!

not a "duh" moment at all. You learned a great bit of food history.

I love curries too.

[EarnestPutz]

6. Thank you for your kindness. I love meeting people from other countries and food is....

....such an easy thing to talk about if you want to know a little about someone. This doctor was such a nice man. We talked with him for half an hour after telling him that we were planning a trip to India. We told him we were planning on going to Kerala and he pitched his ancestral home of Tamil Nadu as a better choice. Life is something, isn't it? An hour later he did my colonoscopy.

[IcyPeas]

8. hope that went well.

[SheilaAnn]

4. Ask malaise, believe she's a great cook and is in Jamaica...n/t

[Lunabell]

7. Well, thank you for helping me have a "duh" moment too!

And I love all curries, Indian, Thai, Jamaican. I love it all.

[EarnestPutz]

9. You're welcome and thank you too. You've got to laugh, especially at one's self.

[treestar]

10. I love talking to people from other countries

And learning about life in other lands.

I have a friend from India who said she can tell when Chinese Restaurants in the US are owned by people who came via India. There's a difference between Chinese food from migrants from China and those who ran a Chinese restaurant in India and then came to the US.

Also the US thinks it is the only place people immigrate too, but it is interesting to hear of Indians who were born in Tanzania or Asian people born in Peru or Paraguay, because their family made that migration rather than one to the US.

[Towlie]

11. I saw a headline about a soccer match: "Mexico vs Trinidad and Tobago." I thought "That's not fair!"

 
?

[malaise]

13. Jamaica is playing the USA in Austria tomorrow

[malaise]

12. South Asian Indians have not been in the Caribbean for 400 years

Indentured Indians arrived in the Caribbean after Emancipation in 1838 because the effin' English folks loved free labor (Emancipation was in 1834 but the scumbags insisted on a four year Apprenticeship period to keep our ancestors in the cane piece)..

I'll forgive him for the date because Caribbean medical students are notoriously weak in matters history or social sciences.

On the other hand, in Guyana, T&T, Suriname and Jamaica, there is no doubt about the Indian influence on diet although that is certainly less true of Jamaica which did not and does not have a large Indian population. Guyana and T&T have way more Indian dishes than Jamaica. Curry came from India for sure but so did every mango in these territories and a variety of other fruit, vegetables, herbs and spices. Rice farming in Guyana us another major development associated with former indentured Indians.

[EarnestPutz]

14. "Notoriously weak?" Please don't make generalities about Caribbean people, or any other....

....ethnic, social or professional group for that matter.

[malaise]

15. I made a factual comment about Caribbean medical students

Indeed the University of the West Indies had to introduce mandatory courses to correct this problem.
The FACT is that South Asian Indians did not arrive in the former British Caribbean until 1838.

[EarnestPutz]

16. You are no doubt correct in stating, as a fact, the date that Indians arrived in the Caribbean.

Being correct in this regard does not, I feel, allow you to make a blanket statement about all Caribbean medical students and their universal deficiencies in history or the social sciences. I'd be curious to read about these mandatory courses if you could provide a link.

[JI7]

17. I think it was more a comment on the education system there . The US has similar issues with history

of non whites and women

[EarnestPutz]

18. You're probably right about this. I would guess that many students at Caribbean medical.....

....schools are not originally from Caribbean countries and are not the product of their primary and secondary school systems. My own primary care physician is originally from Columbia but attended medical school in the Caribbean after undergraduate study at the University of Washington.