Cooking Conkie

The Caribbean Easter is celebrated with food, God, and glorious kite flying.
We eat saltfish, dumplings, ground provision ( yam, dasheen, eddoes, sweet potatoes) plantain, and rice maybe. Conkie was my favorite taste of Easter this year. However, allow me to set the record by saying explicitly ” I live out of alignment to the Caribbean expectations imposed on or accepted by women my age. I do not cook traditional meals well nor do I pay particular attention to keeping house.
So, most of the festive preparation of meals is missed by me. I am single so neither is there any congregational or household demand for food. I buy food and cook in parts. Nonetheless, I expect to eat Caribbean Kittitian Easter Food.
Hence, I like the food. My father cooked for both of us. While we lived together we had roles, he cooked and I adored him and praised the act of him cooking. He in turn gifted plated food. We worked.
There was never a real request for my participation and I never offered.
Daddy would be around forever. So, someone would take joy to feed me.
I have seen conkie made before, first, you get a measured amount of cornmeal,
then add grated sweet potatoes, grated coconut, cinnamon levels sugar, and the selected spices. Then you use both hands and squish it all together over and over until the materials are inseparable.
After we boil the banana leaves in hot water to make them pliable for wrapping. Then you put the textures paste into the green banana leaves wrap it up and allow it to boil for about 1/2 hour. The act of cooking in Caribbean families is mostly led by the woman and so the artform of making to feed and feeding is passed on intentionally to girls.
I had a father who was purposed to gift me food as our act of communion and love.
He would make Conki outside of our one-room small house and boil it on three stones in the yaba pot. I would fan the flame and listen to tales as tall as him. As the fire burns the base of the yaba and lights up our lives in love.