The many ways of  pigeon peas

By Lara Pickford-Gordon

snrwriter.camsel@catholictt.org

The annual pigeon peas festival, held in Diego Martin during the Carnival season, has promoted the many uses of pigeon peas in pholourie, pizza, lasagna, khurma, cupcakes…and even ice cream.

One of the festival founders Florence ‘Flo Joe’ Warrick-Joseph, a parishioner of St John the Evangelist RC Church, Diego Martin, launched a book of pigeon peas recipes on Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at the National Library Information System Authority (NALIS), Port of Spain. It contains 20 of her tested and sold recipes at the festival and gluten-free options.

T&T is known as ‘meat mouth’—a meat-loving society, with the Poultry Association of Trinidad and Tobago estimating one million chickens are consumed weekly. Warrick-Joseph said there are people looking for alternatives to meat and white flour.

Apart from vegetarians, she added, “We have people looking for alternative flour, we have people who now, because of their diet, who have cancer, who are diabetic, looking to go outside that meat-eating thing”.

She said many cancer patients choose to become vegetarians and avoid the adverse effects of meat.

Warrick-Joseph said meat consumption has been linked to inflammation in the stomach which can cause tumours to metastasize—spread to other organs. She said beef and pork can take long to digest in the stomach and cause “acid stomach”. These meats, as well as lamb, have been classified as Group 2A carcinogens.

Warrick-Joseph said people are more health conscious and mindful of what they are eating.

“You know your medicine becomes your food and your food becomes your medicine; what you eat you become, that is the traditional African saying,” she said.

Warrick-Joseph is a certified farmer who sells her products at farmers’ markets in Diego Martin, Macoya and San Fernando. At these events, some patrons enquired about gluten-free products.

She said: “I decided to do a gluten-free line of the products. We do a gluten free pholourie, we do the gluten-free bara and muffin, fruitcake, and bread. We have dairy-free ice cream, dairy free punch… In this book, I embraced both ideas with the gluten-free, dairy-free and the traditional recipes; so, it is a combination of all the ideas. With my nursing background the book has all the health tips.”

Warrick-Joseph has worked in the public health system as a nurse manager and nurse educator. She has served in Intensive Care Units and emergency rooms. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she was at the Couva Hospital, which was a main hospital for extremely ill Covid patients.

“Being there too helped me push the book a little more because I am seeing what can happen to us, a pandemic in the country,” she said.

Another influence on the production of the book was the Pigeon Peas Festival. The first event was in 2015 with the theme Sustainability Through Agriculture Production and Tourism.

She explained that it was part of her project including a portfolio on pigeon peas for the Event Management course she was doing at the Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business.

The festival since its first instalment has been managed by the Upper Cemetery Street Resident’s Association, of which Warrick-Joseph is a founding member. She stressed the festival “was a community project”.

This Resident’s Association is supported by the Rose Foundation. Warrick-Joseph said a commemorative recipe book was published for the first festival. “I researched ice cream, punch etc, [with] my background is nursing education, so it fit into our community project”.  A pigeon peas fashion show with clothes and jewellery was held in 2016.

Another “community book” with recipe contributors was to be published but this did not materialise. Warrick-Joseph did not want the idea to die out, so “this personal book came about”.

Persons interested in getting a copy of Local Recipes Pigeon Peas can contact Warrick-Joseph at 307-2493.

The annual pre-Carnival Covigne Pigeon Peas Festival is on Saturday, January 27, 2024, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.