Today is another lovely day, a day to hit the road and wander the cape. Maybe I’ll take all lefts this time. I did get to the dump yesterday but didn’t get any groceries. Last night I cooked spaghetti. I left the package on the counter. I didn’t expect it to be an enticement for Nala. I was wrong. I saw her with a few pieces of spaghetti in her mouth as she escaped out the dog door. The rest of the spaghetti was on the floor. Picking up spaghetti is not an easy task. It tends to break into smaller pieces. Nala was right beside me the whole time.
When I was young, we used to have pajama parties. Many were birthday parties. We’d arrive wearing our pajamas and carrying a pillow and a blanket. We’d stay up talking, laughing and eating junk until the wee hours. Mostly we’d be in the living room. At some point in the evening, one parent or the other would start periodically yelling for us to settle down. We always quietly laughed, but eventually we’d fall sleep on the floor wherever we could find room. Breakfast was always donuts and juice. As soon as I got home, I’d take a nap.
My mother usually served what she knew we’d eat at supper. The meat and the potatoes were never the problems. It was the vegetables. Carrots were mashed with potatoes in sort of a disguise so we’d eat them. For years, I thought mashed potatoes were orangey. She never served any beans except green beans or wax beans, both from a can, but I never really thought of them as beans. They were the wrong shape. My favorite vegetables were baby peas and niblet corn.
Ghana expanded my palate. I had no choice but to eat mostly unfamiliar foods. The only foods I recognized were tomatoes and onions, and I never used to eat tomatoes. During training I remember wondering what the green stuff was we were served for dinner. I didn’t eat it. It was kontomire, a stew made with cocoyam leaves. There they were, cocoyam leaves, another mystery food. I used to buy groundnut paste, peanut butter by a different name. I’d add a bit of groundnut oil to thin the paste which Ghanaians used as a soup base. I learned to like okro, garden eggs, groundnut stew, fufu, t-zed, yams, plantain, one of my favorites, pawpaw ( papaya) and mangoes. The fruit was spectacular: sweet green oranges, pineapple, bananas, coconut and the new to me fruits, pawpaw and mangoes. I never liked kontomire.
