Well the thing about seeds in Jamaica is that you are more likely to wear them on your neck than put them in your food. And when I say seeds I mean great big ones the size and shape of stones you would find in a river.

Lots of them are that fabulous chocolate brown but others are bright red and some are greyish white. If you go to any of the big tourist attractions like Dunn’s River Falls you’ll find people trying to sell you a couple strands. I love them. I am often happier wearing my costume jewelry than some of the good shit my husband has bought me over the years. He however does like when I dress ethnic– I had to remind him once when he came back from Scotland with a very gypsy looking skirt that I didn’t need to dress ethnic that I WAS ethnic. 6th generation Jamaican on my father’s side. My mother’s side is different as her father was born in Lebanon – we now have a FB group descendants of Bechara, Saleem, Habib and Abdo Wehby. My grandfather is Saleem Wehby and he married Lena Ennever in 1910. I never knew Lena who was French and black but I did know her sister my beloved Aunt Olive, my god mother, who was a nurse and taught nursing at the University of the West Indies.

If you remember she appeared a couple posts back as it was on her veranda that I use to have those fabulous drinks. Anyway Lena and Saleem had 10 children and the youngest was my mother Olga Hyacinth Wehby. Aunt Olive would definitely be the type of woman who would wear seeds aka beads around her neck – she was into all things Jamaican and I definitely remember going to the crafts market with her. She would buy us dollies that were made of cotton and their clothes were made of scraps of brightly colored cotton printed cloth and their earrings were definitely made of seeds. I have one such dolly in my daughter’s room – the earrings on this doll was greyish white that could look like a pearl from a distance. Of course sometimes the earrings would come off my dolly as they were sewn on using as little thread as possible and sometimes I would have to sew them on again and sometimes one earrtng would be higher than another.

My favorite were the ones that had a scarf what we would call a” tie head.” I don’t want to get too far into this “tie head” thing as this would lead us into a discussion of black women and their hair and that’s a slippery slope. Witness the many shelves of products that my daughter and I share.

When I stop to really think about it nutmeg is a seed. Nutmeg being my favorite spice. In it’s natural form it’s two spices in one. On the  outer hard shell is mace which kind of looks like veins on a hard shell and when you crack the shell the lighter brown nutmeg is on the inside. I use it a lot in my cooking. Definitely in my pumpkin soup and love it in cocktails like rum punch – it’s also is great in custards and ice cream and egg nog.

So I guess you could say I like to both eat and wear seeds.