Food for Thought (and to Eat)
From a friend back home:
About a movie: "...she went to Greece and fell in love with his guy...a guy that was always smiling and made the most out of life. someone with positive energy all around him - someone that really seemed to impact the people around him, ya know? someone that it would be impossible not to notice and not to respect and admire.
...do the characteristics of fictional characters even exist in real life? or do we just
torture ourselves hoping to come across those that we feel we are familiar with through brilliant hollywood scripts, scenery, and acting? i ramble."
Has Hollywood made women have unreasonable expectations? Perhaps. I certainly like the description above (and think I may have found someone who almost fits that description, I just don't know for sure yet. The potential is still there though, as well as the desire for that kind of Perfection. What happens when He's Not All That?). Even before Hollywood, there were knights in shining armor and fairy tale endings (not the Grimm Brother ones where everyone's eyes get pecked out). Expectations, particularly unrealistic ones, spell disappointment. I've been thinking lately that a person can love someone and it just isn't meant to be--not exactly the default Hollywood happily ever after. Too angsty for that. But isn't that also a romantic notion? Ala Romeo and Juliet? Othello and Desdemona? Okay, death doesn't ALWAYS have to be involved...
I ramble.
CHOP
My friend ended her email with a more easily answered musing: "i was walking down the street the other day and realized that, despite your emails and descriptions, i still have no idea what you eat. like what Ghanaian food is, or is not. I realized i still pictured you overseas eating falafel and shwarma and whatever other middle eastern food you ate."
There is no escaping Chicken and Rice. Numerous times Jane and I have ordered something else (usually in a village or out-of-the-way joint) and ended up with chicken and rice (as if that's the only thing an obruni would/could eat). I find that even when we're cooking at home, we often stir up some variation of chicken and rice---usually with sweet'n sour sauce or lemon sauce or curry, but anyway you dress it, it's still chicken and rice.
Jane has astutely characterized other typical Ghanaian food as Mashed Balls of Carbohydrates.
Fufu: pounded cassava (sometimes with plantain added). First you boil it, then pound it into a glutinous mass, usually with a giant, wooden mortar and pestle (which is taller than the person pounding, who is standing and heaving it up and down, resulting in perfectly defined arm muscles. Usually done outdoors, with a tok tok sound, great rhythm, especially when you have two people going at the same vat of goop at once with two poles. Also requires more energy to make than you probably get from eating it!)
You're not supposed to chew fufu--just swallow...but fingers do a little squashing action that is almost like chewing and it goes down easier with the soup it's served with. There are 3 common soups: light, groundnut (peanut), or palm oil. I'm still always afraid it's going to get stuck in my throat. Sometimes I sneakingly chew. But really, not that appetizing.
Banku: fermented corn and cassava dough. Usually served with okra stew ('stew' isn't runny like soup, it's more like sauce). (Blogger and Flickr aren't being helpful with posting the picture here, so click on 'banku' to see it with okra stew...and here's one of us eating at a 'chop bar' in July.)
Kenkey: boiled fermented corn dough. Eaten with fish, canned tuna or corned beef.
Boiled Yam
Boiled Plantain
Omo tuo: mashed rice balls (with groundnut soup)
Red-red: fried plantain with beans, oil, gari (I don't now what gari is, other than a white powdery substance)
Kelewele: deep fried and heavily spiced plantain
Green-green: I also recently heard of this...a grasscutter is a small rodent (bushmeat)...they take that contents of its stomach after it is killed and make it into this stew.....ewwwwww.
Other sauces include spinach stew or tomato stew. A healthy dose of shito (hot pepper sauce) is added to everything (but not mine!).
I can get burgers, pizza, shwerma, Chinese, Indian (last two a bit expensive though!).
For lunch at the office, there are a lot of options around. I usually eat red-red at least once a week ($0.50 will fill ya up), maybe banku and okra stew and fish another day, maybe chicken and rice. The office also has salads delivered from a restaurant and I do that about twice a week (large variety of choices: Nicoise, Mexican, Chicken Tikka, Layered Pasta, etc, about $2 or $2.50 and you get a nice plastic container to keep!).
I share Frenchie's love of "planteens." Boiled, fried, grilled! The Benin cook where Jane works has some secret Gabon receipe of mashed plantains that is fabulous with groundnut soup that you can't get anywhere else---and she told me she might bring me some home today!!!!! *False alarm*
About a movie: "...she went to Greece and fell in love with his guy...a guy that was always smiling and made the most out of life. someone with positive energy all around him - someone that really seemed to impact the people around him, ya know? someone that it would be impossible not to notice and not to respect and admire.
...do the characteristics of fictional characters even exist in real life? or do we just
torture ourselves hoping to come across those that we feel we are familiar with through brilliant hollywood scripts, scenery, and acting? i ramble."
Has Hollywood made women have unreasonable expectations? Perhaps. I certainly like the description above (and think I may have found someone who almost fits that description, I just don't know for sure yet. The potential is still there though, as well as the desire for that kind of Perfection. What happens when He's Not All That?). Even before Hollywood, there were knights in shining armor and fairy tale endings (not the Grimm Brother ones where everyone's eyes get pecked out). Expectations, particularly unrealistic ones, spell disappointment. I've been thinking lately that a person can love someone and it just isn't meant to be--not exactly the default Hollywood happily ever after. Too angsty for that. But isn't that also a romantic notion? Ala Romeo and Juliet? Othello and Desdemona? Okay, death doesn't ALWAYS have to be involved...
I ramble.
CHOP
My friend ended her email with a more easily answered musing: "i was walking down the street the other day and realized that, despite your emails and descriptions, i still have no idea what you eat. like what Ghanaian food is, or is not. I realized i still pictured you overseas eating falafel and shwarma and whatever other middle eastern food you ate."
There is no escaping Chicken and Rice. Numerous times Jane and I have ordered something else (usually in a village or out-of-the-way joint) and ended up with chicken and rice (as if that's the only thing an obruni would/could eat). I find that even when we're cooking at home, we often stir up some variation of chicken and rice---usually with sweet'n sour sauce or lemon sauce or curry, but anyway you dress it, it's still chicken and rice.
Jane has astutely characterized other typical Ghanaian food as Mashed Balls of Carbohydrates.
Fufu: pounded cassava (sometimes with plantain added). First you boil it, then pound it into a glutinous mass, usually with a giant, wooden mortar and pestle (which is taller than the person pounding, who is standing and heaving it up and down, resulting in perfectly defined arm muscles. Usually done outdoors, with a tok tok sound, great rhythm, especially when you have two people going at the same vat of goop at once with two poles. Also requires more energy to make than you probably get from eating it!)
You're not supposed to chew fufu--just swallow...but fingers do a little squashing action that is almost like chewing and it goes down easier with the soup it's served with. There are 3 common soups: light, groundnut (peanut), or palm oil. I'm still always afraid it's going to get stuck in my throat. Sometimes I sneakingly chew. But really, not that appetizing.
Banku: fermented corn and cassava dough. Usually served with okra stew ('stew' isn't runny like soup, it's more like sauce). (Blogger and Flickr aren't being helpful with posting the picture here, so click on 'banku' to see it with okra stew...and here's one of us eating at a 'chop bar' in July.)
Kenkey: boiled fermented corn dough. Eaten with fish, canned tuna or corned beef.
Boiled Yam
Boiled Plantain
Omo tuo: mashed rice balls (with groundnut soup)
Red-red: fried plantain with beans, oil, gari (I don't now what gari is, other than a white powdery substance)
Kelewele: deep fried and heavily spiced plantain
Green-green: I also recently heard of this...a grasscutter is a small rodent (bushmeat)...they take that contents of its stomach after it is killed and make it into this stew.....ewwwwww.
Other sauces include spinach stew or tomato stew. A healthy dose of shito (hot pepper sauce) is added to everything (but not mine!).
I can get burgers, pizza, shwerma, Chinese, Indian (last two a bit expensive though!).
For lunch at the office, there are a lot of options around. I usually eat red-red at least once a week ($0.50 will fill ya up), maybe banku and okra stew and fish another day, maybe chicken and rice. The office also has salads delivered from a restaurant and I do that about twice a week (large variety of choices: Nicoise, Mexican, Chicken Tikka, Layered Pasta, etc, about $2 or $2.50 and you get a nice plastic container to keep!).
I share Frenchie's love of "planteens." Boiled, fried, grilled! The Benin cook where Jane works has some secret Gabon receipe of mashed plantains that is fabulous with groundnut soup that you can't get anywhere else---and she told me she might bring me some home today!!!!! *False alarm*
posted by Jill at 9:36 AM
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