Whether Laura is cooking or sailing or farming, her pursuits keep her close to the land and the sea, and close to her island’s heritage. The tastes of her history are definitely intertwined in all she does. Laura’s love of her native foods and skill preparing them come naturally, having grown up cooking with her grandmother, her mother and her aunts. She has explored those tastes, experimenting with the huge number of herbs, spices, and flowers she is growing with Greg, dozens of kinds of mint, thyme, oregano, marjoram, sorel, shadow beni or culantro, cilantro, parsley, rosemary, fat bulbs of ginger and turmeric, hot peppers, flavor peppers (for flavor but no heat) the list goes on and on. 

The farm and the sea provide Laura with most of the ingredients she needs for the Caribbean cuisine she prepares. She sautés plantains, roasts breadfruit, steams green bananas, boils sweet potatoes with dashin, uses coconuts in a host of baked goods, such as breads and dumplings. She makes rotis, the giant floury pancakes, and serves them with a wide variety of curried fillings: goat, chicken, conch, beef, and vegetables. She uses sorrel, like our flower hibiscus, for drinks, wines, stews, and jams. She dries fish for the salt fish used widely in the Grenadines. Laura uses it in her version of boljol, a mixture of salt fish, hot peppers, and cucumbers, marinating it in lime juice. She also uses it in a similar dish in which the salt fish is stewed instead with onions, garlic, spices, and sweet peppers. 

Take a look at the picture of Laura sauteing bakes, a kind of yeast biscuit prepared in a skillet. She’s going to serve that with the spicy salt fish stew you can see in the bowl. We were sailing on a catamaran on this trip, which usually provides a somewhat more generous galley than a monohull – see how the stove top has room for two skillets to be used at one time, a luxury when you’re cooking on a sailboat.