Ready to Lime?

Welcome to Thyme to Lime! It's my hope that this blog will serve as a medium for many future cooking escapades and debacles. From culinary masterpieces to kitchen disasters, I'll try to document the best and the worst. Further, I hope to sharpen technique, methods, presentation etc.

I've been cooking ever since I was 10 when I made Chicken Parmesan and Baked Ziti, without help. Over the years my cuisine has expanded and my love for not only food but preparing each dish has increased. Cooking is more than just a means to eating for me. It's my way to unwind. It takes my mind off daily stressors. It brings people together. It embraces culture. It is an art.

Through blog-inspired challenges, on-the-whim cooking, dinner party creations and cooking with friends I plan to mold my art, add definition and depth, texture and taste. And of course: EAT!

Here's to many cooking adventures!

A little background on the blog name
I am Trinidadian. While we have many sayings, one of the most frequent heard is the action "to lime." Long story short to lime means to hang out and most always, food is involved. Hence: Thyme (time) to lime. Some ways it is used:

- Let's go make a lime-- Let's plan something fun
- After work, do you want to lime -- Do you want to hang out.
- Going to the beach was a good lime -- The beach was a good time

Some official background

Trini slang for friends hanging out together.
Can be large or small, pre-arranged or impromptu.
Often involves food, and ALWAYS requires beverages (not necessarily alcoholic, but it certainly may).
It is NEVER a hurried activity. It can occur on a beach, by a river, at someone's home, or on a street corner.

What does a citrus fruit have to do with hanging out?
The Republic of Trinidad & Tobago was a British colony until 1962. Trinidad, since it is only 7 miles off the coast of Venezuela, had been originally colonized by Spain as a military outpost from which to launch expeditions for El Dorado. The Brits wrested it away from the Spaniards and, like so many other Caribbean islands, it was turned into a sugar producing colony peopled by African slaves and later by East Indian indentured servants. When the locals would go into the capital Port of Spain, they'd see British sailors all lollygagging about having a dandy time being unproductive with their mates in the tropical heat. Slang for the Brit sailors was "limey" (since they had to eat limes to prevent scurvy) and hence the Trini slang was coined by the locals watching the foreigners.

True to Trini character, liming is not merely a slang term. It is an outlook on life that values good times with good friends and defines a significant part of the culture in Trinidad