In search of my quest for food, it seems as though I am becoming more and more fluent in Spanish. I live in Florida, I love root vegetables and so does the Latino community. They gravitate towards the same exact foods that we Jamaicans eat. I know this because I run into them all the time, while grocery shopping. I now know that calabaza is pumpkin, yuca is cassava and boniato is sweet potato, hence my fluency in Spanish.

In Jamaica, we eat lots of “grung food” aka, foods that we dig up from the earth. In addition to root vegetables, we eat lots of tubers, which includes but is not limited to,  white or yellow yam, cassava, dasheen, coco, yampie and sweet potatoes.

I do try my best to limit the amount of these tubers, that I feed to my grandma, due to their starch content. She is diabetic, but these foods are soooo amazingly good.

The other day I purchased “white name” at a Spanish supermarket, which contributes to my so called fluency in Spanish. When I took it home and showed it to my grandma, she said it was coco. I wasn’t too sure about that, because growing up, I only recall the purple coco. I had no idea there were other varieties, with different colored flesh.

The other day, I made some chicken and didn’t feel like eating it with rice, so I decided to eat it with yukon gold potatoes and some of this coco. Oh Boy, why did I do that? This thing was so amazingly good. It’s texture was smooth and almost buttery….and… mashed potato just ain’t got nothing on this. Period. Later in the week , I cooked a huge pot of Cow Foot Soup, and added this coco, and once again, it was a match made in heaven.

This will now be a regular on my grocery list. It will be cooked on its own, added to stews, baked, roasted, mashed, used for fritters, fries and pancakes.

Wow….There goes my grandma’s glucose level!