Christmas is coming. It’s time to dry orange peels.
When I think about the Christmases of my childhood, I don’t recall the stockings I received, the trees I decorated, the gifts I gave, or the carols I sang. When I think about the Christmases of my childhood, something that immediately comes to mind is sorrel, a West Indian beverage brewed from the leaves of a plant in the Hibiscus family. My mother would make sorrel in two different batches, every year in December, and only in December. One batch, spiked with rum, was for my father. The other batch was unadulterated and left for my brother and me to fight over.
All three of us, my father, brother and I are big drinkers. By that, I don’t mean that we get soused at every opportunity; we just drink a lot of liquids. While the three of us would drain a pitcher of water with dinner every evening, my mother, on the other hand, would ask for only half a glass of water at dinner. I never understood how that could be enough.
We drank a lot of different beverages throughout the year. We always had water with dinner, unlike many of my friends who drank milk with meals. Coke was a big family favourite, but the intake of soft drinks was strictly controlled by my mother. Still, on special occasions (like getting a report card of straight A’s I’m not kidding) we were sometimes allowed a Coke with dinner. Dad had a special fondness for peach-flavoured Quench, and powdered iced tea was a house staple. Of course, Mum would always tell us there’s water in the tap.
Still, none of these beverages could compete with the Christmastime sorrel. I don’t know if it was because it was a limited time only beverage that it was coveted so dearly by my brother and me, or if it was because its sweetness naturally appeals to children and anyone with a sweet tooth. Whatever it was, I know that I was furious whenever I discovered that my brother had finished a bottle in one sitting, or, God forbid, finished the last of the sorrel. The latter meant that I had an entire year to wait for another glass! As I grew older, I learned to hide a bottle of sorrel from my brother in order to avoid such a grim circumstance.
As I write this, I have a bag of sorrel leaves in my cupboard, sent to me by my mother. Now I’m able to make the sorrel myself, spike it with rum if I want to, AND drink it all in one sitting without competition if I feel like it! My mother sent me her recipe for sorrel a few years ago, but as I started to dry my orange peel this year, I wanted to know if her recipe is the version widely accepted throughout the Caribbean, or if there were variations to explore. As expected, I began to see many opinions on what should and should not go into the making of sorrel. Jamaicans, for example, believe that fresh gingerroot is a must, while my mother, whose recipe hails from Trinidad, never puts ginger in her sorrel.
This recipe discrepancy came as no surprise to me, but my jaw dropped when I looked into how sorrel got its name. Wouldn’t you know it came from ‘Anancy’, the trickster’! This discovery almost knocked me down, for I had all but forgotten about Anancy. Anancy is the main character in a series of Caribbean folk tales. He is a spider who plays jokes and tricks on everyone. As a child, I was given the very same Anancy book, by the very same aunt, three Christmas’s in a row! Needless to say, I knew my Anancy stories, but I had never heard this one:
The story is told of Anancy discovering a ‘red-sinting’ at the Grand Market which he later managed to extract some juice from. To the extract, he added sugar and some spices for flavouring. On tasting his concoction he exclaimed of its likeness to real wine by shouting repeatedly ‘so real, so real, so real’. He sold his so-real wine to his customers who loved it so much they kept wanting more and more of it. The word ‘sorrel’ then emerged as a corruption of the words so-real and the drink became a popular one at Christmas time.
This Anancy folk tale was unknown to me, but I loved it. It makes perfect sense at least it makes perfect Caribbean sense. You can read more about sorrel, its origin, uses and medical properties here . In the meantime, start drying your orange peels, and be sure to hide a bottle from your brother!