Enter’Jamaica

Typically, when you think of Jamaican food the first things that to mind are Jerk and Patty. Surprisingly enough, those are Jamaican Staples! Congratulations you thought right. You will rarely find a Jamaican who does not eat Patties or some form of Jerked meat. I will attempt to give you an idea of what a Jamaican Menu will look like for different days of the week and for different occasions.

Let’s start with Weekdays.

Monday through Thursday breakfast usually consists of a combination of the following:
boiled or fried eggs, fried ripe plantain, cornmeal, rice, banana or hominy corn porridge, Milo, coco or Horlicks, mint tea, or cerase, bread, and fritters. The list is endless but these are some that come readily to mind. Chances are, if you randomly pick a Jamaican and ask them what they had for breakfast in the past week, one or more of these will pop up.

For lunch on the weekdays, it all depends on where you work or how much time you have and how much you want to eat. Lunch can include any combination of the following:
Patty-beef, cheese, chicken, vegetable, shrimp, mega(any meat patty with lettuce and tomatoes, box lunch- cooked food such as rice and peas and chicken with vegetables, Bun and Cheese, soda, coconut water, bag juice and box juice, red peas, conch or chicken soup.
Now, dinner for a Jamaican is meal of the day that we look forward to. A typical dinner menu could include:
Rice and peas- even though this is mostly reserved for weekends, white rice, yam, banana, dasheen, dumplings, sweet potato, irish potato, and cabbage and corned beef, stewed chicken, curried chicken, Stewed peas, tripe and beans, cow foot and beans, corned beef and macaroni, and the list goes on.

Now notice that I said weekdays Monday through Thursday, this is because Friday has one very important feature…NOBODY COOKS ON A FRIDAY EVENING. breakfast and lunch are as per usual but on a Friday evening, its time for something special and the culture is buy dinner. Dinner can either be bought and carried home or eaten on the road. This is the time of the week reserved for things not eaten for the rest of the week and more than likely “non traditional foods” or fast foods. Some foods and restaurants include, Island Grill, KFC, Burger King, Pan Chicken and even Pizza.

 

Weekends are a different affair. More time is available and as such breakfast prospect tend to change. A typical Sunday or Saturday breakfast may include: Ackee and Saltfish, our National dish, so it holds a very special place in our hearts, liver, mackerel, red herring, fish, saltfish and cabbage, boiled green bananas, yam, bammy, roast or fried breadfruit, festival, boiled and fried dumplings. Sunday dinner is also a special affair and i have noticed that most Jamaican families, settle into the habit of preparing the same set of foods on Sunday. Sunday dinner must include Rice and Peas and one or a combination of the following meats: Fried Chicken, Baked Chicken,Oxtail, Curry goat, Escoveitch Fish, Stewed Pork, Jerk anything….potato salad, toss salad, macaroni salad. Saturdays are not complete without soup. There really is no rule to Saturday eating apart from breakfast and soup.

How could i forget…Sundays are not complete without Dessert Ice cream and Jello or Jello and condensed milk. Or the family goes out to get ice cream.

Special occasions come with special foods. For funerals it’s customary for the family of the deceased to have a nigh night before the funeral and to prepare food for families and friends after the funeral. There must and i emphasize must be mannish water and curry goat and White rum. I really don’t think anything else is mandatory. You might have heard about blue draws and run dung, but you will be surprised to know that those foods although a very important part of our culture are not foods that you encounter everyday here in Jamaica. You should, after this post, have a very good idea of what to expect when you come to Jamaica and are looking for “traditional” foods. It bears well to know what to expect so you can prepare your stomachs…apart from the rich array of foods we love our foods spicy. Eat up!