Cooking with Dingis

On Friday August 10th, we had the super opportunity to go to Dingis's house for a lesson in how to make roti.   Dingis is a wonderful, soft spoken, loving, delightful Grenadian lady who was introduced to us through Ann Vanderhoof's books Embarrassment of Mangoes and The Spice Necklace.  We were all very excited about this opportunity.  The guys were elected to go with us to play music while we had our cooking lesson and also for the roti lunch we were preparing.  

This is the view from behind Whisper Cove Marina that I talked about in a previous blog.  Our boat is in about the middle at the top.   I can hardly recognize it as it looks as if it is combined with a boat behind us.  If you look for the tallest mast at the top of the picture and follow it down there we are!! The land in front of the boat is Hog Island.

Here is part of the crew at the bus stop.  We were waiting for Shauna and John to arrive via the bus.  Little did we know they had been dropped off further up the road and had walked down the hill and were already at Dingis's house.    Barb (blue top) and Diana are talking to a girl waiting to catch the bus.

I was peeling potatoes with Raymond (Raaaaymoun).

Dingis is working the dough into balls a little bigger than golf balls. These would then be filled with a split pea mixture and the dough rolled out and fried.   Yours truly is outside.

The guys were upstairs playing music.  After lunch, when they were all played out (tired fingers)  Dingis came upstairs with requests.  They obliged and we sang a few songs before we packed up and headed back to our boats.  We were filled with roti and bursting at the seams from our experience.

The Cooking Crew

From the left back row - Diana, Carvell (Dingis's niece),  me, Barb, Dingis, Shauna

Front row  Bici (Dingis granddaughter) and Genell her mom (Dingis daughter)

We had such a good time.  The love and friendship that was shared by Dingis's family was a Grenadian  experience I shall not forget.  We laughed and learned about making Roti.  It took us 3 hours to make this traditional Grenadian / Trinidadian food.  Certainly was a labor of love.