Jamaican food of Chinese descent

Continuing with yesterday's story on residents of Chinese descent in paradise, there is a very successful business family in Jamaica by the name of Hendrickson, who owns a major bread company National, and despite the name that sounds more Northern European than Chinese, they are of Chinese descent.

The family is known for having introduced to Jamaica a machine to slice bread, which made their small bakery grow into National, whose many products also include my favourite plantain chips. They then expanded into the hotel business, and now own numerous hotels and resorts in Jamaica and other islands, including Courtleigh that serves my favourite Jerk Chicken Linguine that I wrote about on October 21.

I was looking for a newspaper feature article on the history of the family that I read once, but instead, I encoutered an interesting interview with the head of the family published on the Gleaner in 2003 - Karl Hendrickson: A business titan speaks. His warning then about the risk of Jamaica becoming a country of buyers is spot-on in today's context.

In all those stories about the family that I read and heard about sporadically in different places, what left a lingering impression on me was this machine that sliced bread in a massive quantity. Every story about the family seems to begin with this machine, like a legend. Now every time I see the name National on a small package of plantain chips, the first thing that comes to my imagination is this legendary machine surrounded by people in awe. Beside the legend behind the name National, what I like about National plantain chips is that they are very light and crisp, they are cheap, and above all, they are put in small packages that help me not overeat them. Each small package is only 25JMD - that's only 32 US cents, and contains 120 calories.

Where is the news...?

The Sunday Gleaner was in high demand this morning. I went to a pharmacy around noon to buy a copy to discover that they were sold out already. I went to a supermarket next door, and they were sold out there also. My curiosity was strongly stimulated, and I asked the salesperson what the news was this morning, but she didn't know. I had to find out, and I drove to another supermarket. Luckily, it had a few copies left, and I finally got to look at the front page headline. It said "Not Important," with huge photos of the faces of the two U.S. presidential candidates.

The news that helped sell the paper so well this morning was merely that a former prime minister of Jamaica said that neither of the two U.S. presidential candidates cared very much about Jamaica. My first reaction was, what is the news about this? It does not seem to me that the information makes any news; there is no story in it even. I mean, most of the countries of the world wouldn't be considered very important by the two candidates at the moment in any case, and to me, it's no news if Jamaica wouldn't be an exception. How is it that such a matter would make interesting news for so many Jamaican people to make the paper sold out? Or is the general assumption that Jamaica is considered more important than others by U.S.? I am puzzled...

By the way, to continue with yesterday's story on Jamaican people's love of fried food, on the lower right-hand corner of the photo, you can see an advertisement of Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is by far the most thriving among the U.S. fastfood chains operating in Jamaica. In contrast, McDonald's didn't do well at all in Jamaica and withdrew in October 2005. To me, that was big news, that McDonald's, the global giant that seems to be able to grow everywhere, couldn't compete in Jamaica. But it didn't make any headline on Jamaican papers...!

Will Blue Mountain coffee survive the global financial crisis?

I had no idea, when I wrote the blog on October 9, 2008, that Blue Mountain coffee was facing a major challenge for survival. First, International Herald Tribune published an AP report a few days ago that the two largest Blue Mountain coffee bean buyers stopped buying the beans because of the combination of bad times, i.e. the economy and hurricanes: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/10/18/business/CB-Jamaica-Blue-Mountain-Coffee.php. Then today, the Jamaica Observer, one of the two national dailies in paradise (the other is the Gleaner), reported that two major Blue Mountain coffee companies were being "divested": http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20081022T010000-0500_141617_OBS_COFFEE_SALE.asp.

I read the Observer article. What was striking to me was that the Jamaican government wants to privatize them, which implies that they are government-owned at the moment...! I had no idea, but Blue Mountain coffee has been government-owned in Jamaica, like water and electricity (by the way, now, Marubeni, a Japanese trading company, owns the electricity of Jamaica...). This indicates how important coffee beans have been for paradise.

The fundamental issue, however, that the Observer missed was that, whether privately or government owned, Blue Mountain coffee is facing a serious difficulty. It's "a want, not a need" when it comes to good coffee, I suppose, and so people around the world just choose to live without Blue Mountain coffee. I hope, I really hope, some affluent individuals out there would come and save the good old, wonderful, so dark and flavourful Blue Mountain coffee at this hard and difficult moment of the world...

The photo shows the packages of Blue Mountain coffee beans sold at the Sovereign supermarket in Liguanea. On the top shelf are found Jablum packages made by Mavis Bank (http://www.mavisbankcoffee.com/mavis_about.php), and the bottom shelf has packages from the Wallenford (http://www.wallenford.com/), both of which are being considered for "divestment" at the moment.

An avocado that is a pear

Avocadoes are called "pears" in paradise. They also look slightly differnt from those avocadoes that I was familiar with elsewhere - the outer skin of a "pear" has a lighter green colour and is much more smooth than that of the avocado that I knew - thus initially, I did not think that they were avocadoes (though I did not think that they were pears that I knew either). But once you open one, you will see that it is in fact an avocado.

Avocadoes are in season right now in paradise. I purchased one that felt perfectly ripe (53JMD, about US$.75, at the Loshusan supermarket in Barbican), put it on a toasted multi-grain bun with cream cheese, sprinkled on top a bit of lime and a pinch of fleur de sel brought from France, and there we go, my breakfast this morning.