So much sugar can't be good for me

Instead of getting right to the food, I might as well say a few things about the culture. Here is a cricket match in the small town of Arima. Brian Lara is a national hero (other than oil workers leader Uriah Butler who the main highway is named for, there's my red quota) and the promenade in Port of Spain is named for him.
Speaking of oil workers. These steel pans can be fashioned from old oil drums. Carnival is not until mid February but people are already getting ready for it along Fredrick Street.
I don't know about real Carnival but for this practice the most commonly served foods are fried chicken, french fries, and bake 'n' shark. Fried things will be a common theme here.
That is bake 'n' shark (also called shark 'n' bake) from on the beach at Maracas Bay. The bake is a fried piece of bread. The shark is fried shark that makes the filling for the sandwich. You can add a whole host of condiments like tamarind sauce, cabbage, pepper sauce...

If you've read the old blog you may remember doubles. This is a more authentic way of having them, for four TT dollars, on the side of the road, dished out of a big bucket of channa.

This guy liked to flip the top poori in the air to show off.

This is Accra. It's like a hush puppy with a little salt cod in the middle. You can't really taste the fish much, it's more for seasoning. Am I wrong in thinking the name comes from the city in Ghana, West Africa? In case I failed to mention, the exciting thing about Trinidad is the mixture of East Indian and West African food.

This seems more west African. It's pone, a dessert made from cassava.
This is obviously Indian, the national dish of Roti. Kendra and I some how wound up at a party for cops and ate their food. They had number of dishes. One of the curries might have been cow foot.
The Indians who came to Trinidad brought cooking techniques like chhownk with them. This is the same as bhagaar and tarka which means to cook spices in hot oil to intensify the flavor. In Trinidad they use the shortened, invented word Choka just to describe the whole dish. It is commonly done with tomato or eggplant as below.It tastes like roasted eggplant like baba ganoush.

This is a roadside stall where this woman hand rolled the dough to deep fry aloo pie.

Here is a more local beach. The water was pretty dirty but not as many waves as most of the island this time of year so it was full of swimmers.
The most popular snack at this beach was phoulorie. Here I am lined up at a stand back in Port of Spain to get some.
It's little balls of deep fried dough served with a mango chutney.
People seem to love this as everyone in front of me in line got multiple bags of a dozen each. It seems to be more popular among Indo Trinis. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

Finally here is a market in Port of Spain where they are selling Sorrel.
You can use it to make a drink which Mexicans call Jamaica. Why not Trinidad?