Jamaica

It's good to be back working in Jamaica for a short time. In addition to doing some work, I've been stuffing my face with mango, as predicted in an earlier post as well as other yummy fruit. The house we're staying in has several fruit trees in the yard including a lime, avocado (called pear in Jamaica), two types of  mango (okay, technically not in our yard but limbs from a neighbor's tree hang over into our yard :) and a grapefruit.

On the work front, we've been jointly running an archaeological field school with the University of West Indies and have had good luck locating some sugar plantation buildings we were hunting for using old survey maps. The crew had fun macheting our way through bush in order to uncover some of the overgrown treasures.

All this is providing a little break from the sewing machine and though I find myself twitching a little and sewing in my sleep I think it's probably a good thing :)

Thank me later Thursday -- a mango detour

watercolor and colored pencil by my friend, Leslie Pierce

I'm scheduled to go to Jamaica in a couple of weeks for work and cannot wait to get my hands on some juicy mangoes. Here in the states we tend to only get a few of the varieties but in Jamaica there are more than you can imagine.

Originally from the Indo-Burma region of the world, a serendipitous event involving a captured French boat with seeds onboard in 1782 brought the first ones to Jamaica. Many varieties were introduced during the nineteenth century from India and later from other Caribbean islands. 



my watercolors from a trip a couple of years ago--can you tell I was obsessed?

A few of the Jamaican names for the different varieties:
Tie-tie, Cedot, Amelie, Jacot, Mazagan, John crow bellyful, Cashew, Busha's wife, Ladies' fringe, Yam, Saltfish, Miss Cuskett, Dandy Williams, Duckanoo, Grandfather and Bees' box, Zil, Julie, East Indian, Bombay, Graham, Haden, Kent, Robin, Long and Black mango, Keitt and Tommy Atkins (to name a few).  Some are simply known by numbers.

The textures, shapes, colors and taste of different mango types vary. Hmm. Maybe it should be my goal this time to try them all. My absolute favorite is the Julie, so juicy and delicious. It would be hard to top it.

Tip: If you get them here in the states, you can buy them when they're green (they're usually varieties from Mexico) but have some willpower and wait until the skin changes to splotches of gold and red before you eat it. That's when it's ripe and delish!

Read more about Jamaican mangoes here.