I finally got the Airbnb listings up properly. Or at least I hope I have. If you want to stay in a really nice place in Portland, here you go:

https://airbnb.com/h/robinhoodguesthouse-bluebalconyroom

https://airbnb.com/h/niceupstairsroom

https://airbnb.com/h/jeffsdownstairs

https://airbnb.com/h/ourdownstairsroom

Or else Robinhoodguesthouse on Bookingdotcom.

The prices are low because we are just starting out and that is what you do when you are just starting out.

Sherwood Forest is up the top of Zion Hill. I thought it got its name because of Errol Flynn being such a big personality around Portland back in the day. But Mr. White, the JP over in Nonsuch said it was named after a local family, the last of whom “kicked off” in recent memory.

Aside from the roosters and the occasional extended dog communications, it is very quiet up here. Everybody knows everyone else. Many of the residents are tradespreople: masons and carpenters and so forth. We live on “Farm Road” and if you sit on the verandah in the morning you can see the farmers in gum boots with machetes, going to their garden plots. Some people farm just for themselves but many sell either locally or to wholesale buyers. In the grand scheme of villages worldwide, Sherwood is prosperous.

In order not to go bonkers, I had to find a working persona for myself. What to DO especially during Covid and all the lockdowns? At first, I had decided to give up cooking because I am kind of sick of cooking. But I have done it for a long time, and I am skillful. So I stuck with it as an attribute. Then Dimple told me, “I love your food, Becky,” and Bobo told me that I am like “an acrobat in the kitchen,” and I was encouraged. I do all the cooking for the household and also bake bread and various cakes and things that turn out well with local ingredients: banana bread and gingerbread or bullas, as they call them here.

I am used to the homesteading side of things from having lived in a fishing village in India. They kill and butcher a cow down the lane every two weeks or so, and I take that big steaming pile of meat and cut it up and portion it and freeze it. “You mean you're going to throw that away!” I get from Bobo when he sees the offal and silverskin. Well, that’s why you have dogs! But by now my methods are somewhat respected. Those neat little plastic bags of meat in the freezer are impressive. The tallow I rendered was viewed with some suspicion but It is pure white and very nice. Good for cakes and so forth. Butter is expensive as it is imported from New Zealand and there is no way I am using margarine! The meat is certainly grass fed. You can see the cows eating that grass in the meadow right across the lane. It is as tough as shoe leather but supposedly way better for you that way than the

meat in the States that is grain finished. You do need a pressure cooker or a lot of gas.

I have a juicer, an Instant Pot, a Magic Bullet and a few other nifty tools. I also brought my eighty-dollar knife/cleaver that I wouldn’t let anybody touch until Bobo borrowed it and spoiled the edge chopping up a frozen wild rabbit. He clearly thought my dismay disproportionate, but he has been working on filing it back into shape.

Neighbors come to the gate to sell bok choy, water coconuts, yams and other root vegetables. The vegetable mafia, two elderly station wagons full of vegetables, comes by on Fridays, honking to alert us. I never buy from them as I am considered too credulous and certainly a poor judge of yams. Sometimes I am told to go hide in the house so the vendors won’t see me. There are two “corner stores“ at the end of Farm Road where you can buy staples and a few other things.

It is not too different from living in Saunta Vaddo, in the seventies in Goa. Once you figured out what ingredients you had to deal with it was a straight shot. In Goa it was fish curry rice every day and a veggie or two. Carmeline, my ayah, sat down at the big mortar and ground out the masala and we ate that beautiful Goan “boiled rice” and had fresh coconut in the curry. All that really changed was whether the curry was red or yellow and which fish you were able to wrangle off the fisherpeople in the morning when the men came in with their boats.

Jamaicans eat a lot of rice, too, but the main staple in the “country,” what they really like and clearly thrive on, is their “food,” plantains, cassava, koka, and yellow yams, rooty sorts of things that mostly come right out of the ground. They will eat loads of those with a smallish portion of some kind of curry, or the famous “saltfish and ackee,” the Jamaican national dish. When we were little kids in Constant Springs, We used to shudder at the smell of salt fish when our maids cooked it for themselves, but I love salt fish now. It is a wonderful ingredient for “seasoning up” vegetables.

We are blessed to have a good spice company: Island Spice. What the big supermarket carries will vary, but I was happy to get ground cumin and ground coriander, too! No longer any need to bring spices from the coop in the States. The “Indian” who used to sell curry masala off his bike around town is no longer to be found. Maybe he died. But Island Spice has some good curries without the MSG which is unfortunately a popular ingredient on the island. Jamaicans have such robust health that they can just gobble that crap down. I would be surprised if most of them even know the meaning of the word “gluten.”

Bobo is slightly shocked with my profligacy. He thinks I use too many tomatoes. “In Jamaica vegetables are expensive. It is not like in the States.” Compared to the States they are actually pretty damn cheap! He reminds me of my grandmother Cobb who lived in Vermont during The Depression.

Bobo's mother, Dimple is a serious eater. She comes in and fills her plate, settles down and tucks it away with concentration. She eats large amounts but doesn’t get fat. (Well, maybe she is a tad “thicker.”) I think she stores it away in some escrow account in her body in case of problems down the road. A person who has seen real deprivation knows when they have it good. Carmeline would tell me about having to go camp out in the rice paddies during a smallpox outbreak and about the bad habits hungry people have during famine. Goa is not like that anymore, even though we all complain about how overdeveloped it has become.

Dimple has her digs next to the garage and an iPad with an internet connection. She listens to her religious stations and sings. She has a little flower garden with some orchids and a kick ass habanero bush outside the back door. She is very serious about our “farm” and is up there a lot. She had plans to corner the broccoli market, but some broccoli loving insects put paid to that.

This generationally fortunate white lady pitched a fit when she brought back half a bottle of vegetable oil from the store. “You want to know why people are dying of heart disease around here?” I said, “ It is because of that stuff. Your grandmother lived to be 103 and now what is going on?” One of the masons told me, “I can’t afford to buy coconut oil. I don’t have that kind of money!” Sorry I am not buying that! You could if you thought it was important. (More important than hanging out in bars gossiping and having your wife assault you and knock you off the verandah.) Or you can use chicken fat, lard or tallow. I am a frigging health evangelist! Alas, as is often the case, a prophet is without honor in his own family and his own town. On the whole, though, as a "foreigner," when it comes to other people's culture, I think it best to not have too many opinions and just shut up.

The daily question, as it is everywhere else in the world, is "what to cook for dinner?' We need to take a trip to the supermarket which is miles away over the coast road, now a non stop construction zone. Rumor has it that the contractor has stopped working and the project is in court. The automobile mechanics are prospering. Well, I can probably get some saltfish up at the corner store and cook vegetables.