Barrow vs Belize
Barrow-in-Furness gets about 1,200 mm of rain per year. Belize City gets roughly the same. But they are not the same kind of rain.
In Belize it rains hard and fast — twenty minutes of serious intent, then it’s done and the air smells of warm earth. In Barrow it drizzles. Persistently, horizontally when the wind comes off Morecambe Bay, and seemingly without any particular intention of ever stopping.
My wife has lived in Barrow for four years. She still hasn’t entirely forgiven the weather.
The market
Belize City has a central market that feels like it operates on its own logic: vendors who’ve been selling the same plantains from the same spot for thirty years, and prices that are a negotiation rather than a fact.
Barrow has a market too — Market Street on Saturdays. Good for cheap veg, a decent butcher, and a stall selling kitchen equipment at prices that feel slightly implausible. Plantains, however, are not a given.
What we brought with us
A cast-iron pan. A large bag of achiote paste (now getting low — see the pantry page). The knowledge that scotch bonnets are, in fact, findable in Manchester if you know where to look.
And the recipes, obviously. That’s the whole point of this site.
More posts when life allows.