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If you have grown up in an agricultural environment, you have a strong sense of what fruits and vegetables look like in their natural state. You recognise their scents, even when you are not quite aware of it.
I recall uncovering a container of shredded cabbage and discovering my late grandfather. I had never realised that one of the smells I associated with him came from this leafy green until I lifted the lid that day.
Cauliflower and tomatoes, too, would arrive in big baskets—I think they were made of woven bamboo—to be sorted before being taken to market. Donkey Harry, as we called him, would pull the wooden cart from the field in Aranjuez, and it was a treat to be able to hop on as he neared our homestead.
My grandfather carried the smell of mud; his feet would be caked with it.
When we were little, after he had showered and had his lunch, we, grandchildren, were summoned to massage his legs and back and remove the slivers of mud from under his fingernails and toenails with matchsticks.
It fell to us children to sort the tomatoes that would be spread out on jute mats (I am not certain what they were made of; crocus bags are much more plastic in their texture, and these were soft, maybe burlap).
The task was to separate them into those that were ripe and those that were halfway there. The bruised ones, with the torn skin, had to be discarded because their proximity to the solid ones with their leaky selves would cause the others to go bad quickly.
Those chores brought a measure of intimacy with the land and its offerings. Something seasonal would often come our way, especially fruit. The farmers would share their harvest with one another, even when it was destined for the market.
Sometimes there would be a pumpkin, or bodi (the short purple ones and the long green varieties), or sweet peppers, or zabocas; these decided what our meals would be.
The array of fruit was vast. Mangoes, plums, cherries, sapodilla, paw paw, puteegal, bananas, pommeracs, pommecythere; these were not indoor fare.
No adult intervention was necessary. We ate them out there in the yard, peeling them either with teeth or knives. It is a time past, I know. But I pay tribute to that little epoch when such access was taken for granted.
It taught me how to select produce, how to disregard the sometimes blotchy skin and the gnarly shapes to assess actual quality. It brings me to a few points I am bursting to make.
The first is that without this connection to the home life of fruits and vegetables, we have adopted the practices of so-called developed countries (the ones that have done the most damage to the planet with their “enlightened” behaviours).
We seek out vegetables and fruit that are perfectly shaped, with an even complexion, and an astonishingly bright hue. We don’t pause to consider how such produce attains these characteristics.
We don’t pause to reflect on how long they have spent in transit before landing on our soil. We like them smooth and slick.
Of course, I am talking here about the imported stuff that seems to have greater allure than our home-grown things. (Some of my friends tease me because of how the appeal of strawberries annoys me.)
It appears a considerable proportion of our population must be fairly well-to-do because they seem to be able to afford eating habits that are way out of my reach.
Clearly, the newspapers recognise this, with their recipe offerings featuring very la-de-da ingredients. Even if we are a land of wannabes and profligates, we cannot escape the reality that the cost of foodstuff has reached an alarming high.
One of my friends was complaining about what he called the unscrupulous practices of supermarkets to package fruit and vegetable trays in such a way that the top layer is but a mask for the wilted or mushy stuff underneath.
It is deplorable and exploitative behaviour, and it seems prevalent right across the board. It is one of the many reasons why I prefer to patronise vendors at their stalls.
I was telling him that I know only one large supermarket that has packaged its not-so-fresh produce in a corner of the chiller where they are marked down considerably. It’s not spoilt, but they are useful for stocks and for immediate use.
The point is that there is no reason why large, price-gouging groceries can’t do something to help people make ends meet. Why not introduce “deal” corners where you openly tell people the shelf-life of produce and reduce the prices? Or better yet, why not give them away?
In that same grocery, I remember taking a tray of something to the supervisor and showing her that everything under the plastic wrap was clearly rotten. She shrugged it off.
When you think about it, there is a remarkable amount of food waste in this country. The almighty ones think nothing of discarding things that still have value and nutrition. I would like to think that there are policies and practices in place where foodstuff can be donated daily to places that prepare food for the needy.
It is so much better to share than to hoard and discard without making a real contribution to this strange society.
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
