Local Drinks

As I strolled through the grocery store last week I was struck by the variety of bottled and boxed drinks on the shelves.  That same store was owned by P.H.Veira when I first lived on Bequia, and they didn’t have much to offer other than powdered milk! The only soft drinks sold back then were  pepsi or Ju-C, very sweet soda pops that were bottled on the mainland and sent to Bequia on the Friendship Rose.  My breakfast in those early days usually consisted of a sweet bun filled with dyed coconut, washed down with an equally colorful J-C.  Red J-C, orange Ju-C, yellow Ju-C, they were all very bright and they were all very sweet.   Sugar, sugar and more sugar!

Momma Simmons always made juice to go with the mid-day meal on Family Hill, and getting used to the local beverages took quite some time.  Mauby was the first drink I was offered at Momma’s house, and she laughed at the face I made when I took a sip. It was AWFUL, my North American tongue literally curled! Mauby is made with the bark of the mauby tree and local cinnamon sticks. Momma put cloves and orange peel in her brew and it was powerful stuff. Mauby has a strange bitter-sweet taste, kind of resinous, but with time I grew to like it as long as it was served over ice. Lots and LOTS of ice…….

Another beverage that took getting used to was Ginger Beer.  This local favorite is made with freshly grated ginger root, cinnamon sticks and cloves. When I tried Momma’s for the first time I actually gasped, I could feel the juice burning my throat as it went down.  This burning sensation was momentary, the ginger beer was spicy but strangely thirst-quenching, and I soon added it to my list of newly-acquired tastes.  Once added to dark rum the ginger beer becomes a “Dark and Stormy”, an alcoholic beverage I associate with sailors on a rough sea .

Sorrel I liked from the very first sip.  It’s a seasonal drink found in most West Indian homes in December and January, and along with ginger beer it was often on the menu at the Pizzeria.  The juice is made with dried petals of the sorrel plant, which is actually an hibiscus, and once boiled in water with cloves it turns bright red in color, perfect for the Christmas season.  It’s also good in a white wine spritzer, very refreshing!

Momma Simmons gave me some of her fresh Tamarind juice, and after my first sip I knew it was never going to make my “newly acquired taste” list.  It was horribly sour, and as I watched Momma separating the pulp from the seeds I could see it was also labor-intensive.  The tamarind pods grow on trees, and my children often joined others under Lyston and Rita’s big tamarind tree, salt in the palm of one hand and tamarind in the other.  They would dip the tamarind in the salt before eating, and my girls loved the taste. Yuck!  Bequians also make tamarind balls with the pulp, sugary on the outside and sour on the inside.

Mac and I had a cherry tree in our front yard, not cherries like North American cherries, rather tiny little berries that are mostly seed.  Mac often made cherry juice, and after creating an unholy mess in the kitchen he would share his finished product.  Because there is so little flesh the making of cherry juice is rather tedious, and it takes an awful lot of fruit to make just one jug. I don’t particularly care for cherry juice but it’s a local favorite when the fruit is in season.

I love soursop but am usually too lazy to make juice with the fruit.  It has to be peeled and then squeezed to get the juice out, either by hand or with a sieve, then blended with water and a bit of fresh lime.  Lime Squash is another popular West Indian drink, and the local limes make it a flavorful, thirst-quenching beverage on a hot day. A drop of Agnostura Bitters makes lime squash just about perfect, and I served it for years to customers at the Pizzeria.

There are different ways to prepare all the local beverages I have listed but the one thing they have in common is SUGAR.  Mauby, Ginger Beer, Sorrel, Tamarind, Cherry, Soursop and Lime Squash all require quite a bit of sweetening to be palatable, without the addition of sugar the drinks are either sour or bitter.  Bequia has a long history of diabetes, it’s a very prevalent disease on the Island, and I have often wondered if the vast amounts of sugar used to make the local beverages has been a contributing factor throughout the years.