“Dear Jollof Rice, how I love you so!”
Today is lovely. The sun is framed by a blue sky, it is warm, in the 40’s, and there isn’t the slightest breeze. I didn’t have to defrost my cream, a gleeful highlight of the morning. I’m going out later. I need dry and wet cat food and cat treats. Jack is not happy about missing his morning treat, but he is happy about the sun. He is lying in a pool of sunlight on the kitchen floor.
Lately I have been craving jollof rice, my second favorite Ghanaian dish, only overshadowed by kelewele. When I was last in Ghana, I had jollof rice almost every night. Usually I’d have roasted chicken to complement the rice, not vice versa. The plates came heaped with the jollof rice. The chicken was delicious but the rice was exquisite. I need to do some food shopping. Some of it is to replace the food which froze. I’m going to make sure I order all the makings of jollof rice. I don’t even need anything to accompany it.
When I was a kid, we lived in a project of all duplexes. Both sides of the duplex had three bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen, a too small kitchen, and a huge cellar. The project was overloaded with kids. Back in those days you had to be a veteran with a family to live there. Our backyard was at the bottom of a grassy hill. We shared the hill with duplexes fanned around the top. All of the duplexes had clothes lines in the back. They stretched from metal posts at each end of a blacktop. Each duplex had three lines. I remember the clothes on the lines in winter would freeze. The sheets froze at angles as if the breeze was blowing them. My mother would sometimes have to bring the frozen laundry inside to dry on the clotheslines in the cellar. The clothes lost their whimsy as they defrosted.
Explore posts in the same categories: Musings
January 24, 2020 at 6:21 pm
Hi Kat,
You and I are members of the largest group of children born at the same time. We are boomers and proud of it. When our fathers returned from WWII they wasted little time going to college on the GI bill and starting families. Remember the birth control pill wasn’t available until 1960. All those new families had to have places to live and the GI bill gave them low interest loans and the suburbs sprouted.
We lived in a huge apartment complex of two story apartments in North Dallas. Each group of apartments has metal T poles where cloths lines connected each pair. My mother thought that hanging the wash out to sun dry was better than using a mechanical dryer. It most have been true because the laundry rooms had dryers but the clotheslines were always full.
January 24, 2020 at 7:25 pm
Hi Bob,
Nothing beats the fresh smell of sheets dried on the line. The dryer is convenient but give me the fresh air dryers lack.
The duplex was perfect for us. I can still see every room in my mind’s eye. My father had a lawn which made him happy. We all had slews of friends our ages which were varied, and my mother had neighbor friends.
My father was a salesman, a great salesman. Eventually he ran a company, but when I was young he was on the road selling. Seldom did he get home in time for dinner.
I am so tired of reading aging baby boomers.
January 24, 2020 at 11:25 pm
My dad was also a very good salesman. He also traveled but his territory was too large for him to come home at night. He would leave on Monday morning and return on Friday night. A few times a year he would be gone for two weeks. His territory was Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas. Of course he was off from Thanksgiving through New Years and took June and July for vacation.
January 25, 2020 at 1:36 pm
When my father got transferred to Maine, he only came home weekends. That was close to a year. Luckily he did so well as the manager he was transferred again to Boston so we didn’t have to move. A short while later, he was transferred to a larger market on the cape.
January 25, 2020 at 12:12 pm
I don’t have a dryer so I hang out all my clothes to dry even if it is freezing outside 🙂 They actually dry when it is that cold too but slower and I’ve always felt that they even smell better than if they had dried a warm summer day.
Mostly sunny here today and warmish too and since there was no wind it really felt like spring 🙂
Have a great day!
Christer.
January 25, 2020 at 2:41 pm
Hi Christer,
I am allergic to a variety of stuff in my backyard so when I first moved into my house, I used to hang the clothes in the cellar to dry. The cellar is vented to the heat so it didn’t take long.
I thought the sun might come out, but it didn’t.
Have a wonderful day!