Goat's head soup - not here

The other day we set out to Mandeville to look at an old pool table. We took the (relatively) new T1 superhighway, which unfortunately peters out before you get there.

Then we made our way up the winding road into the cool of Mandeville. It turned out to be a rainy cool day of 75 F up there. Mandeville always provides a respite from the heat. After the usual navigation by successive approximations using a cellphone we found ourselves picking our way through an abandoned bar/restaurant once run by a former Alcan worker. (Bauxite is a huge export product here in the mountains.)

Way in the back we found evidence of life in the hills. These days a reference to guns would be required.

Farther back were the pool table(s), dusty and abandoned.

Out in back we saw a particularly noisy guard dog,

and some old kitchen gear. I would love to have this Vulcan stove at home!

Soon we abandoned that and went off in search of cousins. Moo-Penns Supermarket is a fixture in Mandeville, located right in the middle of town. Esther's cousin Cecille married into the family. We found her here, under an umbrella and guarding a parking spot for us. The traffic is unbelievable!

We took off for the back of the store where the family used to live. There we found NOT Jamaican bananas, but boxes full of saltfish. This is salted codfish, a Jamaican staple. Lots of standard dishes include this.

There we also found Dr. Winston Moo Penn, retired research biochemist from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. He was starting up a soup based on fish heads and foo jiuk (Bower romanization - translation - some kind of stringy bean curd thingy). Esther's people (Chinese) will eat anything.

We had to leave for Kingston before it got close to finished, though. This was a day of close calls, on the road and in the kitchen.