Life's been a blur for the last two weeks, and I've been meaning to find a quiet hour to blog. Fortunately, things calmed down a bit and normal service is now resumed. Wuk, yuh know work, the day job has been manic. And much of it has to do with the World Cup as I've been working on programmes about Trinidad and Tobago's historic debut in the World Cup.
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Last weekend, Bex, Bonnie, Avalon and I went down to Brick Lane in East London to check out the annual Baishaki Mela that's held to celebrate the Bangladeshi New Year. It's said to be the premier Bengali celebration outside of Bangladesh.
By the time we got there, the main parade was done but there were still people in costumes buzzing around to give us an indication of what we missed.
We walked the length of Brick Lane among the thousands, mainly from the Bangladeshi community, taking in some of the sights and smells of this vibrant part of London, and Bonnie, a Trini-Indian jokingly warned "this is not the crowd to lose me in".
Whenever I go to Brick Lane, I try to have a meal in one of its many curry houses and this time was no different.
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I have just seen the tastiest chef in the UK. Scottish chef Tom Lewis has to be the most gorgeous man in food.
Ok, he's not Brad Pitt but I wouldn't get worked up about Brad Pitt.
People might talk about the gym-sculted form of Gary Rhodes or Gordon Ramsay's rugged and aggressive charm but Tom Lewis has the most infectious laugh and looks like he could scrum down with the best of them.
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I had an interesting e-mail exchange yesterday with Fiona Shoop, the editor of fresh magazine. I sent her an email to say that I appreciated her article on the absence of female chefs.
In my email, I made the point that I believe the issue goes beyond female chefs, because there is also a glaring absence of ethnic minority chefs, male and female. In response, she said she never thought about food in terms of colour but in terms of culture, and that's why the magazine will continue to highlight many types of food in the coming months including Caribbean cuisine.
While I understood where she was coming from, I think she missed my point.
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Ever noticed that the people who hand down the great traditions of cooking are usually our mothers and grandmothers yet the world of food dominated by men?
It's something that crosses my mind pretty often. In fact, I've been thinking a lot about it this week because I've been following the Great British Menu, a competition among 14 of the UK's top chefs to decide who will cook for the Queen's 80th birthday party in June.
Michelin-starred chef Angela Hartnett is the only woman among the group of 14. Angela runs the show at London's esteemed Connaught Rooms and is a protege of the one and only Gordon Ramsay.
It must be said at this point that Angela started her cooking career in the Caribbean at the Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados. So we could claim her as one of our own, kinda.
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I came across an interesting site the other day, the Culinary Podcast Network. It's an American-based site that highlights food podcasts from a group of "passionate gastronomes". Some of the podcasters are professional chefs and others are just total foodies.
There's some damn good stuff on the site, and the first thing that caught my attention was a debate about foie gras prompted by the recent banning of the delicacy in Chicago.
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If you love markets, you probably understand how important the market is in the life of a town or city, both economically and socially.
This week, The Food Programme on BBC Radio 4 does a timely and interesting exploration of the importance of the market as it relates to British life.
London's Borough Market is 250 years old and is one of the most popular in the capital but how are markets in other parts of the UK doing, especially in the face of the powerful supermarket chains? I felt that so many of the issues in this programme are also applicable to the Caribbean, where it seems that we're losing touch with the food we're eating.
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