I have spent quite a bit of time this past year on a personal project, and I am pleased to share that it is now complete. My book, Eat Dessert First: Recipes and Memories from Madeira to Guyana, has just been published.

In our family, food was the answer to everything. If you were sick or well, happy or sad, celebrating or grieving, someone would make food for you. My great-grandmother Deolinda was born in Madeira in 1882. In July 1896 she arrived by boat in Georgetown, British Guiana, joining a growing population of Portuguese from Madeira. The recipes they brought with them blended with the Amerindian, African, Indian, Chinese and British traditions already shaping Guyanese cooking. As each generation of our family lives further from Guyana, I wanted to write these recipes down before they were lost, and to keep the stories that go with them. Most of the recipes were passed down from my great-aunts Agnes and Maisie, my Aunt Anne Marie, and my mother Pamela, many of them found in handwritten recipe books filled more than sixty years ago, on scraps of paper, and gathered in conversations with family members now in their eighties and nineties.

The book is part cookbook, part the story of the food I grew up on. It traces the Portuguese-Guyanese kitchen of one branch of the Fernandes family from Maderia to Canada to Guyana, with stories and memories woven through the recipes. There are about 120 recipes, and before the recipes begin, a bit of social history: the roots of Portuguese-Guyanese cooking, market day in Georgetown, the staples of the 1960s and 70s kitchen cupboard and the rhythm of daily meals. There are also practical notes for  the reader, including a short glossary of Guyanese kitchen terms.

The book opens with desserts as a tribute to my great-aunt Maisie, who had a small cross-stitch on her living room wall that said, "Life is uncertain: eat dessert first." That section alone has 38 recipes, from broas and fudge to pine tarts, salara, cassava pone, and the Shrove Tuesday pancakes made only on that one day of the year. From there the sections move through cakes, savouries, bread, garlic pork, main dishes, soups, sauces, sides, and drinks.

The book closes with a section I called Recipes Not Included, a tribute to the dishes that belong to this story but have no recipe to show for them. They were bought, not made, or made by hands no longer with us. The final pages describe my October 2025 trip to Madeira. Finding so many familiar flavours there brought the roots of these recipes into sharper focus.

The book is a private print run, produced for family and friends. If you would like a copy, please contact me, and I will send you the details. Please note that it will not be available in digital or online format.

Valerie Fernandes Lopes
July 2026