By Grace Cameron, Lifestyle Editor 
IN THE coolness of the Blue and John Crow Mountains, as the sun played hide and seek last Sunday afternoon, we met a woman who turns bread into wine.
Just call me Grandma, she answered when pressed for her name. Grandma is Mabel Smith, an 80-year-old who turns bread, gungo, gimbilin and just about anything she fancies into wine, was selling her sweet, heady nectar by the bottleful at 'Misty Bliss 2004' held at Holywell Recreational Park, St. Andrew on Sunday. (The event was organised by the Jamaica Conservation and Development Trust (JCDT).)
While most of the crowd flocked around the main entertainment area and the food tents, Grandma was perched under the gazebo on the top tier of the site. With her wines, créme de menthe, ginger beer and a titanic-sized pan of sweet potato pudding, she attracted a steady stream of people who came for the pudding and stayed for the wine. A few, including Keisha Bowla and Lillian Davis from Meadowbrook Estate in St. Andrew, intoxicated by Grandma's brew and smitten by her old-time charm, stayed for a spell to help her out. Slowed by age, and shuffling on her feet Grandma, dressed in a cosy pink and cream sweater and black and blue tunic, needed help to quickly slice and serve her pudding ($50 per slice) and provide samples of wine (sold at $250 per small bottle). "We just came by and she appeared like she needed help," explains Bowla. "She's also nice and pleasant and very open, that's what drew me to her."
Born in Tranquillity (near Bybrook), Portland, Grandma is a culinary legend of sorts. Over the years she has won 49 medals 30 gold, 17 silver and two bronze in Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) amateur culinary competitions. She brags that in 2002, she won three gold medals and a two-burner gas stove from IGL.
Grandma has consistently participated in the culinary competiton for the last 40 years, says Pamela Powell, JCDC's National Coordinator for Culinary Arts. It took a short while to get to the gold standard, "but once she got there, she has maintained it. It's a perfect example of someone starting out, not giving up and maintaining her standard."
In the earlier years she bowled the judges over with entries like shad rundown and guava jelly. Lately she has been sweeping them off their feet with the wines she started making about two years ago. "Mi 'ad some fruits and mi decide fi sweeten dem and try a likkle fi mek wine, an' di Christmas mi sell out di gungo wine. Ah couldn't sell enough," says Grandma, who has lived in Charles Town (near Buff Bay), Portland for the last 16 years.
Since that first experiment
she has added créme de menthe, honey, ginger, gimbilin and even bread wine to her repertoire. They're all her favourites, she tells us, but admits to being a touch more partial to the
bread wine.
JCDC judges are not the only ones licking their chops from the offerings of Grandma's pots and pans. "Sometimes mi 'affi 'ide people because dem keep on asking wah 'appen to di pudding and ginger beer," she says.
"Grandma's food is always nice," says Sharon Clayton, who lives in Plum Valley, a district adjoining Charles Town. "When you go by her she's always cooking. She does nice wines. She even does wedding and Christmas cakes," adds Clayton, who was performing with the Charles Town Maroon dancers at Misty Bliss.
Ann Marie Charles, also of Plum Valley and a dancer with the Charles Town Maroons, attests to the popularity of Grandma's cooking. "When you go to her house she always has something cooking and her potato and bread puddings nice."
Still, despite the accolades, Grandma tells Food that she's bowing out of culinary competitions. Instead, the woman who still does things the old-fashioned way (grates her coconuts by hand and bakes her pudding in the traditional style 'hell a top, hell a bottom, hallelujah in a middle'), is passing her know-how down to another generation. She has no children of her own (although she helped to raise her five nieces and nephews) but is teaching some of the youngsters in her district the art of Jamaican cooking.
"But dem fool fool," she laments. "Dem love babies. Some a dem 12 and 13 and teacha 'affi turn dem out because dem 'ave babies."
Beyond that Grandma, whose second husband of 16 years is in a nursing home, will likely do some travelling. Last year she was in New Jersey and New York her second time abroad. Her first overseas sojourn took her to New York in 1963.
These days, there's nothing stopping her from taking off. "Mi 'ave mi 10-year visa."
Before she takes flight though she shares her Bread Wine and Banana Moussa recipe with readers.
Grandma's Bread Wine
4 quarts water
5 lbs. dark brown sugar
1/4 oz. yeast
Toasted bread, broken
into pieces (but not too fine)
Note: If you want a 'bready'
wine, use 'nuff' bread
METHOD
1. Sweeten water with the sugar, add yeast and pieces of toast. Seal mixture in an airtight plastic container for 21 days and leave to ferment.
2. Strain after 21 days. Now the wine is ready to be served.
Grandma's Banana Moussa
Grandma says her parents were poor and that while growing up her mother often made this dish for family meals.
Green bananas
Coconuts
METHOD
1. Grate the green bananas and set aside.
2. Grate and strain the coconut. Put the coconut milk to boil. Then drop spoonfuls of grated green bananas into the boiling coconut milk.
3. Season with onion, thyme, pimento grains and other herbs and spices as you wish. You can also add mackerel, saltfish and other ingredients to make a more hearty meal.
