guyana

So when my aunt came to visit this holiday season, she whipped up some pepper pot for my mom. Sadly they didn’t have lamb for it (that was used on curry instead), so she used a chunk of goat meat in its creation.

 

Apparently you let this stew in a crock pot overnight to cook. I have to get the specifics again on how to create. But you add pepper and spice stuff to it, hence the name.

 

This was my first exposure to the dish, and the first time I ate goat. It actually wasn’t too bad; this one wasn’t tender and very chewy. Otherwise, it typically goes with bread and you use it to suck up the gravy.

 

It was a welcome change to get to eat a more genuine Guyanese dish.

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In 2007 I was coming to the realization that I was barely making headway with friends and social life at college. Everyone was so country, dating someone or people old enough to be your parents. I wasn’t part of the “I graduated from Morristown High School” group, the ghetto click or “redneck romeo”. I was really standalone, slowly discovering that there were more sociable people online than the people in front of me.

In February or March of that year I had started getting into contact with one of my cousins. He, his brother and another cousin were all attending East Tennessee State University, or ETSU. I hadn’t talked to them much earlier, but was beginning to learn that this mystical college was well within reach. All I had known that it was a big school and was more like a “university”.

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In my senior year of Walters State in 2009, I slowly started to take a liking to gardening. I never cared for being outside and still feel that way a little; but putting something to grow and letting it flourish had a sense of accomplishment along to it.

I equated it to the same level as raising fish; it was a hobby, and something that I liked. What set me on that path even more was the stories of rare and odd trees that people would grow, or rare seeds from a special flower. The one that I got hyped on was the heirloom category, genuinely interested in letting 100-year-old strains of peppers or tomatoes to bloom freely out, the rare fruit being yours.

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