The sun is on hiatus. We have clouds, and rain is expected this afternoon. It is warmish, in the high 50’s, where it will stay, even tonight. Nothing is moving in the still air. It is Sunday quiet.

I’m considering tours to my upstairs. I washed and waxed the bathroom floor, the hall and down the stairs. Everything is shiny bright. I don’t know how all of that started. All of a sudden I was sweeping the floors, washing the floors then spreading floor wax. Today I wanted to continue with my mad behavior on the floors down here, but the rain is a perfect reason to let my sloth hold sway.

When I was growing up, my favorite Sunday dinner was roast beef. We didn’t have it often so it felt special. My mother cooked it medium well but there was always a hint of red in the middle. She covered the top with onions slices which browned in the oven and were always coveted. Roast beef demanded mashed potatoes slathered in gravy. My mother made great gravy, always smooth and thick. I remember it pouring out of the gravy boat. We had a couple of vegetables, often peas and corn, niblet corn. For dinner, we sat at the table together, my father at the head. My mother sat but more often hovered.

I carried the Sunday dinner ritual with me to Ghana. It was special. We ate local food bought from a chop bar in the lorry park. The chop bars were lined up on one side of the lorry park. They were small buildings with inside, uneven tables or two which tottered and with mismatched chairs or benches. The cooking was done in the back. We always did take-out. We’d bring two pots, one for the fufu and the other for the soup, and carefully bungee them to the backs of our motos. We had learned to eat Ghanaian food with our fingers, our right handed fingers. The technique was to pull off a piece of fufu then drag it through the soup. My favorite was okro soup, as they call it in Ghana. I didn’t even know okra existed until Ghana. Often we would buy a Cadbury chocolate bar and a Coke to make Sunday even more special. The DPW had a store around the corner where we bought our goodies.

Now, I sometimes cook dinner for myself but mostly I scavenge from what is in the fridge. Today I have some sliced ham and in the counter basket, a sweet potato. I also have some peas. Sounds like dinner to me.

This entry was posted on October 11, 2026 at 11:43 am and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.