“We’ll be Friends Forever, won’t we, Pooh?’ asked Piglet. Even longer,’ Pooh answered.”
Today is sunny but really cold. Last night when we left the restaurant, it was snowing, that heavy wet snow you know will be trouble when temperatures drop later at night. Now the old snow has a new top layer, a crunchy layer because those flakes became ice, and all the surfaces are slick making walking potentially dangerous, especially for me, prone as I am to falling. It is going to be 40˚ on Tuesday. These changes in weather are making me crazy.
When we were in the Peace Corps, conversations often revolved around food, usually the food we didn’t have and missed. Cheese was big on the list. Ghanaians don’t drink or sell milk so nobody makes cheese. We had to make do with evaporated milk from cans and eave cheese to our imaginings. Mostly, though, we missed vegetables. We could only get tomatoes, onions, garden eggs, FraFra potatoes in September and yam all the time. Back then even the lowly green pepper reached an exalted status. Bill, Peg and I ate dinner together every night. It was generally beef which had been cooked in a tomato-based sauce or roast chicken and both were served with mashed yams, a far drier version of mashed potatoes, or rice. One year the rains were late so the crops were late, and we ate so much rice that when I got home I didn’t eat any rice for a couple of years. I had had my fill.
All of us have been back to Ghana recently: Bill and Peg this last September and me in 2011 and 2012, and we were all surprised by the foods we found in the markets: exalted green peppers, watermelons, avocados and even pumpkins, some of the foods we dreamed or talked about over dinner, the same dinner we had night after night. Accra has pretty much anything you want for food, and you can even find cheese in the obruni (white person) stores. All you need is lots of money.
Bill and Peg just left to go back to New Hampshire. The weekend went far too quickly. I will miss their company, the laughs we had and the memories we shared. They are old friends who are among the best of my friends.
Explore posts in the same categories: MusingsTags: Cheese, cold weather, Ghanaian food, Ghanaian markets, Good Friends, ice, memories, Peace Corps Ghana, vegetables, wet snow
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January 26, 2014 at 12:33 pm
It’s interesting how the American Dary Association has influenced and pushed the American diet to include dairy products. In most cultures once a child is weened from it’s mother’s milk they don’t eat or drink dairy products. When I was in Zuhai China my American co-worker took me to a small Deli that carried American food products including cheese. He had to pick up a bottle of Ketchup. I had never thought that dairy products are absent from the traditional Chinese diet. Could you imagine your favorite Asian dish covered with melted cheese. However, I had a cup of coffee one morning in a McDonald’s in Hong Kong and Chinese people were scarfing down Big Macs with cheese.
Globalization has brought us Summer fruits and Fall vegetables to our grocery stores year round. Isn’t it wonderful that good friends and good food go together.
No snow here, the high today will be near 80 degrees with clear skies. Tonight another blue norther will arrive driving the temperatures down to a high in the 30s tomorrow.
January 26, 2014 at 3:30 pm
Bob,
I find dairy products and cheese all over Europe, some of the best cheeses I have ever tasted, so I suspect that this love of dairy may have crossed the ocean with immigrants. In Africa some tribes do drink milk but not in Ghana.
I agree about good friends and good food. I love making dinner for my friends and sitting and enjoying it together around the table.
It is cold here-end of weather report!
January 26, 2014 at 4:13 pm
Of course you are right about our European ancestors bringing dairy to America. However, the dairy industry has promoted their products vigorously. I remember when margarine first came on the market when I was a kid and it could’ the called or referred to as butter. Remember the commercials on TV that had to refer to butter as the “high priced spread”. Although reducing animal fats has been long considered a good thing to do for our coronary health, real butter is in small amounts is probably better than margarine made from god only knows what kind of chemicals.
January 26, 2014 at 4:17 pm
Bob,
As little money as we had growing up, we always had butter. My mother said that during the war the spread used instead of butter was just disgusting, lard-like with coloring you worked into the fat. My siblings and I always use butter.
January 26, 2014 at 1:25 pm
Your temperature really jump up and down now, more even cold here all the time. And the eternal wind that never seems to lose its energy, it will be even stronger tomorrow they say.
The vegetable market exploded when immigrants realised they had to be business owners if they wanted a job (yes no matter how good education they have they still have big problems getting jobs here in Sweden I’m sad to say) and they started selling loads of vegetables we never had seen before. I loved to buy in their stand in the markets. It took some time untilk the bigger stores realised they lost lots of customers because they never brought in anything else than they always had sold.
Have a great day!
Christer.
January 26, 2014 at 3:36 pm
Christer,
We have also had that wind for the last few days, and it has made the cold feel even colder.
I love the summer farmers’ markets around here. There are different ones every day, and I try to hit a couple a week. They are the most wonderfully fresh veggies.
The variety of vegetables available even in supermarkets is staggering and wonderful.
You also have a wonderful evening!
January 26, 2014 at 2:49 pm
To be honest, I missed tasty cheese is the USA 😉
We only found expensive colored plastic cheese. Do you hide the real cheese from tourists?
January 26, 2014 at 3:39 pm
Birgit,
I don’t know where you shopped but there is great cheese in small markets and even supermarkets. The cheese is from all over the world. I can’t even imagine eating yellow cheese except for that Mexican dip which demands it.
I just bought some Irish cheddar which I found tasty. The state of Vermont is also producing some good tasting cheeses. You just have to shop in the right places.
January 26, 2014 at 5:11 pm
We had a significant ice storm here Thursday night and it was Pup’s first adult encounter with this phenomena. We woke threeish to a clear sky and the Moon was out. Everything was lit brilliant white. Pup was totally jazzed by this and begged to go see. I let her out and she stopped short when the ice crunched beneath her feet. There was a puzzled moment and then she began to sproing like Tigger from crunchy spot to crunchy spot with as wide a smile as I have seen on her. She ran in a big circuit around the barn until she wiped out in a frozen slide. It was a great dog day.
January 26, 2014 at 10:40 pm
Beto,
I am so touched by your Pup story. I can see it all in my mind’s eye, and I can’t help but smile. Nothing is more glorious and precious than watching a puppy find the world and all its pieces for the fist time.
Thank you!!
January 26, 2014 at 5:13 pm
Beto,
I just love your story about Pup – how wonderful! She must be lovely.
Marie
January 26, 2014 at 5:39 pm
Here she is.
http://sweatinitout.blogspot.com/2012/01/pixies.html
January 26, 2014 at 7:38 pm
She’s so lovely, Beto – what a face. Thanks for sharing your poetry and the link to Pup’s picture.
Marie
January 26, 2014 at 10:43 pm
Beto,
I love that picture and your poem is perfect. She looks ready for a nap after having explored her world. You are so right about “… the joy that is found in a puppies heart.”
Thank you for the great link!!
January 27, 2014 at 2:19 am
What a lovely puppy and what a lovely poem to describe her heart.
January 27, 2014 at 2:29 am
Hi Kat,
The weather is getting me down, too.
I had to go out in it on Sunday to get a new cell phone because I terminally broke the old one. They don’t really like being catapulted off a table and across a room because the owner was clumsy and caught her foot in the charging cord.
I hate getting new cell phones. They say they transfer all my data but half of it stays in the old phone every damn time. I have to go through my contacts list and reenter a bunch of numbers.
Definitely a First World Problem. 🙂
Is a garden egg an eggplant?
Stay warm and enjoy.
January 27, 2014 at 3:53 pm
Hi Caryn,
A garden egg is a tiny, tiny eggplant:
http://www.spicebaby.com/delicious-african-garden-egg-lose-weight-snack-eat-organic/
I have to get a new phone for my bedroom, a land line. I figure I need one for upstairs.
That sounds like something I would do!