introduction :-)

My grandparents where apart of the windrush generation and immigrated to Great Britain in the early 50s. My parents being children of the empire later joined them in the late 50s-60s. Being born in Britain and having no first hand experiance of life in Jamaica Ive always been aware of the duality behind my identity. Yes i class myself as British but I'm also of Caribbean descent. being the first generation to be born in Britain to migrant parents, growing up there where noticeable differences between my parents and i. I didn't understand there accents, had no idea what Jamaica was like and was unable to identify what it meant to be black british . As a child and sometimes even today I feel like a fake inhabitting two worlds. Cooking and food was always something i enjoyed and made me feel like i was apart of a legacy and a tradition. The Jamaican family stands in sharp contrast to the traditional white British family. The house hold was always matriarchal and mine was dominated by strong women who worked just as hard as the men in the family. dinner and cooking involved everyone, from my father to my twin brother. Cooking was and still is a bonding exercise in my family and the smells and taste of spicy flavoursome food like  jerk chicken, chicken soup, fried chicken, hard food, ackee and saltfish, dumplings will eternally be linked to my childhood.

Throughout these series of blogs ill be exploring different areas of Caribbean food such as:
 the integration of Caribbean food into the British mainstream, home cooking vs the Caribbean takeaways, and Caribbean food for children.