Michelle A Eng Leang

An­oth­er week and ah sit­ting here watch­ing the cur­sor blink at me. What do I write about this week? Ah feel like ah jes fin­ish de last one. Ste­ups. Ah lazy eh?

Is there some sort of equa­tion to defin­ing what I blurt out this time? Not re­al­ly. I tend to let the spir­it move me. The spir­it of sweet T&T. Aye aye! De Car­ni­val huts round de Sa­van­nah build­ing up! I could see my­self eeen one ah dem.

I could cook yuh know! And good, too. I'll lose marks on de pre­sen­ta­tion, though, as I've been known to slap it on yuh plate like yuh in prison.

Thing is ah not re­al­ly cook­ing these days. Okay, these months. Okay, since ah reach back. Back in Lon­don, all I did was cook. Ex­per­i­ment­ing with all the new in­gre­di­ents at my dis­pos­al and more im­por­tant­ly, bub­bling ah Tri­ni pot when I want­ed ah good Sun­day lunch. Every­body al­ways ha­rass­ing me to cook. Aye aye. Let some­body else cook fuh meh nah.

Every Sun­day with­out fail, I head to my Sun­day lunch spot in Mah-rah-val (yuh make out de ac­cent dey?!). You know de one I mean. Next tuh de gas sta­tion nah. And I load up on lunch for de boy and de hub­by. An hour lat­er, every­body hap­py. No stand­ing up in the kitchen for a few hours. No dish­es to wash. And hear de ting, af­ter I cook, I can't eat. I spent so much time tast­ing and fine tun­ing that by the time de pot done, I not in de mood fuh meh own food.

The time is com­ing though for me to start back cook­ing. A year and a month is a good enough va­ca­tion. And with Car­ni­val com­ing up, I want to con­trol ex­act­ly what I put in my body-food wise. And

Christ­mas is the per­fect time to do de big gro­ceries. Al­lyuh know what ah mean when ah say de "big gro­ceries"?

I re­mem­ber every year with­out fail Paula (Mom­my nah!) would go to the su­per­mar­ket maybe two weeks be­fore Christ­mas and or­ga­nize de stocks. She would al­ways say, "Now these snacks are for Christ­mas!" Like we lis­tened, we be­ing me and meh bred­da. The haul would be a mix be­tween lo­cal and for­eign snacks, re­al drinks (soft and hard) and then the raw in­gre­di­ents for the big cooks that took place dur­ing the sea­son.

My Dad is an amaz­ing cook and so is my Mom but both in dif­fer­ent ar­eas of the cui­sine world. Our house was al­ways the lo­ca­tion for en­ter­tain­ing and my par­ents al­ways went all out. I guess that's where I get my love of cook­ing and en­ter­tain­ing.

Noth­ing pleas­es me more than hav­ing good friends over and cook­ing a spread for them. Good con­ver­sa­tion. Good mu­sic. Laugh­ter over tales of mem­o­ries past. Or pulling up at the beach on a Sun­day with my trunk full ah food and en­joy­ing the nat­ur­al beau­ty of my is­land with ah pa­per plate in meh hand, sur­round­ed by friends and fam­i­ly.

So back to de Car­ni­val huts. Ah could see de "Eng Leang's" sign now. What would I cook though? What would be my menu? Maybe I should rep­re­sent that four cul­tures that make me, well, me.

Eng­lish, Chi­nese, In­di­an and Black. So callaloo, right? Dou­bles for sure. Aloo pies, sa­heena, pork pows, mi­ni ro­tis, shark and bake, phoulo­rie (ah spell dat right?) and chow. Ah love ah chow. Now there's the Eng­lish, or should I show Welsh side of me that I would like to in­clude too. So maybe some Welsh cakes, which are the con­sis­ten­cy of bread but shaped like a cook­ie, with raisins.

Now beer is the na­tion­al drink of Wales, so along with Carib and Stag, I might fly some Waen Black­ber­ry Stout in. Or maybe some Brains-Leg­endary Dark, of course.

Ah get­ting ex­cit­ed think­ing about my own red hut now! Of course, the true ben­e­fit is hav­ing that prime Sa­van­nah spot come Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day and see­ing all the ac­tion, first-hand.

I sup­pose I'll add a few more items for de rev­ellers dem. Cig­a­rettes, wa­ter, tam­pons, con­doms and dem kin­da ting. A melt­ing pot of nec­es­sary items for de road. Ah might even put a few phone charg­ers on one ah dem mul­ti-plug unit ting. So yuh come by de Eng and get ah charge up nah. Yuh phone cyan dead when yuh on de road.

And while yuh wait­ing fuh de charge, yuh go take ah lime with me and de hub­by and de boy. Buy ah lit­tle some­thing in de mean­time. I'll of­fer some sun­block too. Painkillers. So Eng Leang's go be de re­al one-stop-shop for de road. Yuh could get every­thing by me. And if ah eh have it, ah go find it fuh yuh. Wha al­lyuh say? 2013? Yuh tink it too late? Make ah call fuh meh nah, yuh know al­lyuh have de link up.