People without refrigeration keep their fish by salting it. Before they cook the fish it has to be soaked in fresh water to remove the salt. So s common breakfast is ackee, salt fish, callaloo and dumplings. This is breakfast - not lunch or dinner.

My posssession of the unripe ackee pictured is something of a breach of protocol. I found it on the lawn yesterday. Some kid probably picked it without the tree owners' permission on the way home from school and tossed it aside. Unripe or improperly prepared ackee is deadly. I will NOT be eating the one you see.

Ackee is native to Africa, but it isn't eaten there anymore. Slaves brought it with them to Jamaica along with the knowledge of how to prepare it so it wouldn't kill them.

The superstition is that it has a poison gas, so one that does not open on its own is not to be eaten. The reality is it contains an enzyme that blocks ATP synthesis in the mitochondria. No ATP = no blood sugar = pass out and die. Ackee is always that peach/pink color so there is no way to tell ripeness except when it opens. It opens from the bottom like a flower to expose several black seeds and bright yellow flesh.

After soaking the salt fish in water, the salty water is used to boil the flesh of the ackee, then that water is discarded. Usually it it then boiled again in fresh water and that water is discarded. Then it's fried with the fish and ends up looking like fried eggs. Allowing it to fully ripen and cooking thoroughly denatures and removes the toxic enzyme.

Callaloo looks like a weed, but it's fairly nutricious. The local muscovee ducks and the Cuban iguanas will eat it if they can get it, so I'm starting mine indoors until I have a big pot with a net outside to put it in. It can be grown from seed or cuttings.

It's steamed with onions or peppers and served as a side with any meal, including breakfast.

The leaves on the far right of the callaloo are from a neem seedling (it's not "herb") I don't do that part of Jamaican culture.

Dumplings (boiled or fried) round out the meal.

Sea grape is completely salt resistant. They are used for erosion control on the Atlantic beaches. This one has gotten way too big, being on a canal. Part of it fell during a thunderstorm a few years ago and mashed a nice aluminum shed the owner had in the back.

This is also the tree the brown iguana lived in. It's been real quiet in the back now that he's gone. He was the dominant male and they are territorial, so the females have scattered.