Happy New Year

Happy New Year from my family to yours!

As I reflect on the past year, I can honestly say that it was a fantastic year for us here at Dominica Gourmet. Although I created fewer new recipes, I did some collaborative projects, made some critical decisions, added more products to our store, and connected with a lot more people.

The US Embassy in Barbados tapped me to create a video featuring Dominican restaurants in the United States. This collaboration was a first of more projects. Although it was a challenge since we don’t have many Dominican restaurants here, it was equally rewarding for me to work closely with the two I featured to tell their stories in 15 seconds. See video here: Dominican Restaurants in the United States

I was fortunate that the Embassy reached out to me again, towards the end of the year to sit on a panel to discuss Caribbean American Christmas traditions. The panel included two other chefs from the islands of St. Vincent and St. Lucia. It was a fascinating session, and it generated all these nostalgic feelings of me growing up in Dominica. I reminisced about eating fruit cake, souse, black pudding, drinking sorrel and ginger beer, and villagers killing cows and goats and sharing with the community at large. But, above all, I shared about the Dominican spirit of giving. Here’s the video of the discussion here.

Working with Discover Dominica Authority was one of the highlights of my 2021. I was very proud to have sat on a panel discussing Dominica’s food and local dishes. It was a thrilling experience as I also got the opportunity to introduce our National dish, demonstrate how to prepare it, and show the audience, mainly travel agents, how to create stuffed plantain cups.
All this I had to do in 15 minutes!

I also traveled with my family to Fiji to celebrate my husband’s milestone birthday, and have some fabulous new recipes that I’ll be sharing down the road. Fiji is so similar to Dominica that I almost felt like I was back home. I’ve been to quite a few islands, including Bali, Bora Bora, Maldives, Zanzibar, and a few others, but Fiji is the closest to Dominica. Maybe it’s less developed than the others, and everything blends so well with nature. There are similar fruits, vegetables, flora and fauna, and of course very friendly people.

So I’ve made some very bold moves. First, I’ve decided to publish a recipe book. It will showcase many authentic Dominican recipes. I’m genuinely looking forward to this and that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t posted new recipes. Since I’m curating lots of recipes for the book, I didn’t want to saturate the blog with too many recipes. I will be posting a few to help support the wonderful community who visit this page looking for convenient Dominican recipes. Secondly, I’m aiming for an end-of-year publication date—fingers crossed. Finally, I’ve also decided to do more educational series, sharing the joys of Dominican cooking.

The year twenty twenty-two will be an exciting and inspiring year, and I’m looking forward to getting to know you all more.

Thanks for all your support throughout the year and a half. When I started sharing my Dominican dishes, I never expected this level of support. Thanks a million!!!