Fact: Ba­nana bread is the in­ter­net’s most-searched recipe. Luck­i­ly for us, we swear our very own Trin­bag­on­ian Ger­ard Mar­quez, al­so known as Chef G shares with us his amaz­ing recipe. This ba­nana bread, made with Nat­u­ral­ly Al­mond milk, is so easy to whisk to­geth­er. You on­ly have to wait one hour while your house fills with tempt­ing aro­mas, and then you’ll be en­joy­ing a slice of warm, fresh-baked ba­nana bread.

Kid­ney stones are very com­mon in Trinidad and To­ba­go and ad­vice is not in short sup­ply. In­deed there are many myths that go along with this ad­vice. Folks of­ten ask about di­et and kid­ney stones as well as treat­ment op­tions. I have tried to sum­ma­rize the im­por­tant points in this ar­ti­cle. While an in­di­vid­ual may have spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments based on an as­sess­ment by his/her urol­o­gist, this ar­ti­cle deals with gen­er­al ad­vice for the av­er­age stone for­mer.

In many ways, it’s a thought that a ‘pause’ but­ton has been pressed on our lives, and is be­ing re­leased slow­ly. We may be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a whole host of emo­tions dur­ing this time, such as anx­i­ety, ela­tion, ex­cite­ment, fear, wor­ry, anger or con­cern. We know that these are un­prece­dent­ed times for our gen­er­a­tion, and that long-term vi­sion is need­ed as things re-open slow­ly, since there is as yet no vac­cine avail­able against covid-19, and re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, it may take be­tween 18 months to 2 years for an ef­fec­tive vac­cine to be wide­ly avail­able. That means that mea­sures such as mask wear­ing in pub­lic, phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing and avoid­ance of large so­cial gath­er­ings are like­ly to be in place for the fore­see­able fu­ture.

Wel­come to the sec­ond half of the gut se­ries! To re­cap, last time, we dis­cussed the im­por­tance our gas­troin­testi­nal tract plays in our di­ges­tive sys­tem. It runs from our mouths to our anus and in­cludes or­gans like the oe­soph­a­gus, the small in­tes­tine and the large in­tes­tine.The mi­cro­bio­ta is like a mi­ni uni­verse in the gut with di­verse mi­croor­gan­isms that in­flu­ence our gut health. More and more stud­ies are show­ing the in­flu­en­tial re­la­tion­ship be­tween our guts and our brains and how their sim­i­lar make up con­tin­ues to af­fect the over­all health of our bod­ies.

June is Men’s health month. This is a time to bring aware­ness to health is­sues that af­fect men dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly and fo­cus­es on get­ting men to be­come aware of prob­lems they may have or could de­vel­op, and gain the courage to do some­thing about it. In this ar­ti­cle we high­light the more com­mon con­di­tions men are at risk of de­vel­op­ing to cre­ate the aware­ness in­tend­ed for this month.

As a busi­ness de­vel­op­ment con­sul­tant, I am al­ways re­search­ing; seek­ing to un­der­stand en­tre­pre­neur­ial trends, psy­cho­log­i­cal states and per­sua­sive in­flu­ences.

When Pas­tor In­di­ra Newal­lo takes the podi­um at The Apos­tles’ Min­istries (TAM) in Long­denville, Ch­agua­nas, she preach­es from a place of ex­pe­ri­ence and wis­dom. The peo­ple she coun­sels in her women’s min­istry, “Her Essence Re­vealed”, open their lives to her be­cause her sto­ry is not un­like theirs.

1) Too much in­doors and a lack of stim­u­la­tion leads to a de­crease in blood flow and a slug­gish scalp, there­by cre­at­ing a scale-like build-up, lead­ing to hair loss if left unchecked:

Among the slew of lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers tak­ing to the dig­i­tal space to meet their au­di­ences is Free­town Col­lec­tive with their Free­town Thurs­day Con­certs. This vir­tu­al con­cert se­ries, cur­rent­ly pre­sent­ed via Face­book Live (@weare­free­town), has as its pri­ma­ry aim to help keep peo­ple con­nect­ed through mu­sic dur­ing the on­go­ing COVID-19 quar­an­tine pe­ri­od.

Long be­fore there were blenders and food proces­sors, the sil and lorha were used for grind­ing sea­son­ings such as gar­lic, pep­pers, pi­men­to, etc. It was typ­i­cal­ly used in the mak­ing of var­i­ous types of chut­ney, par­tic­u­lar­ly co­conut chut­ney. If you’ve nev­er had co­conut chut­ney with your dou­bles, with your cur­ry or with your nor­mal Tri­ni street food, you are sad­ly miss­ing out. No wor­ries though, here’s the recipe so you can make it your­self.

You’d be hard pressed to find a sin­gle Trin­bag­on­ian kitchen that did not pos­sess a tawa. From the Hin­dus­tani word mean­ing “iron plate”, tawas are flat, cir­cu­lar grid­dles made of met­al that are used for cook­ing flat breads like the var­i­ous types of roti and roast-bakes. The first tawas in T&T were used in earth­en fire­places called chul­has that would crum­ble each rain­fall and need reg­u­lar leep­ay­ing (plas­ter­ing) with fresh clay. The tawa would sit atop a well stoked fire and dough flat­tened with a bil­na (rolling pin) would be placed on top of it to cook. When it was time to flip the dough a sim­tah, or tong-like uten­sil, would be used, al­though the most skil­ful roti-mak­ers would use swift and nim­ble hands and nev­er be burned! How­ev­er, the hall­mark of a true tawa-mas­ter is in their abil­i­ty to sakay—the tawa is pulled slight­ly off the fire and the par­tial­ly cooked dough is made to face the di­rect flames! This makes the dough swell and some even let it get a nice toast­ing. To­day lit­tle of these tech­niques has changed.

Spices and sea­son­ings crack­le and crunch un­der the weight of the lorha, re­leas­ing an in­tox­i­cat­ing scent—and you just know some­thing good is about to go down in the kitchen. If this sce­nario rang any bells for you, then you’re a lucky per­son, and you know the val­ue of the orig­i­nal way of grind­ing up sea­son­ing in your aa­je’s (pa­ter­nal grand­moth­er) and nani’s (ma­ter­nal grand­moth­er) kitchens. Yes, we live in the age of food proces­sors and grinders, but can any­thing tru­ly re­place the good ole sil and lorha? I know I am nev­er giv­ing up my tawa for a grid­dle, so if you are lucky enough to have the true and tra­di­tion­al sil and lorha, I doubt you would want to give that up ei­ther.