Sunday, November 23, 2008

Food

In terms of local food, there is a lot I have yet to try because I am vegetarian and veg versions of local dishes are hard to come by.

What I do eat on a regular basis is food that comes in bags. I have already mentioned the water in sachets or small plastic bags, containing roughly 500 ml of water (see bottom of picture below - it only looks brown because it is sitting on my coffee table). The pink thing is FanYogo, frozen strawberry yogurt, but not frozen yogurt - more like what you would get if you stuck a container of regular yogurt into the freezer. They are sold in stores or you can get them from the Fan Man. The Fan Man has a cart that he pushes or is attached to a bicycle. He has a horn with a distinctive sound, no other hawker has a horn that sounds this way - you immediately know it is the Fan Man. He sells FanYogo, FanChoco (not a fan, no pun intended), and Fan Milk. I LOVE Fan Milk. It is like soft serve vanilla ice cream in a pouch. It costs 30 pesewas (a little under 30 cents). It is also a little creepy - they really don't completely freeze, which makes me wonder exactly what chemicals it contains to make such a thing happen. This pondering does not hamper my affection however.

Vendors on the streets also sell rice and beans in plastic wrap, sugar cane wrapped in plastic, plantain chips in plastic baggies (these are very good also), peanuts in plastic wrap, the list goes on and on.

I eat a lot of locally made peanut butter, which here is called ground nut paste, and not surprisingly the peanuts I buy and eat are called ground nuts. The pb here is similar to the organic or "all natural" pb at home - it separates and settles. However, it is very good. I had brought 2 jars of pb with me to get through the first couple of weeks, and I had a spoonful the other day and, in comparison to the local pb I have been eating, it has a chemical taste to it. That is one thing that is true of my diet here, it is more macrobiotic (not including the ramen I sometimes buy from the expensive grocery store, and the chemicals in the Fan Milk) than at home.

Of the native dishes that are common in Ghana, I have tried two in restaurants: red red with plantains and fufu. Red red with plantains is made from black eyed peas, powdered cassava, palm oil (from whence the red color comes), and is served with cooked plantains. It is very good. I finally had fufu last week at a vegetarian restaurant in Accra. Fufu is served with soup. The fufu itself is a paste made from boiled and pounded starchy vegetables, such as cassava, yam, and/or plantain. I had fufu with ground nut soup, which had mushrooms, seitan, and garden eggs in it. (Garden eggs resemble white or yellow miniature eggplants.) It is meant to be eaten with the right hand, scooping up some of the fufu and the scooping up some of the accompanying soup. I enjoyed it a lot.

At home I have made garden egg stew, which is boiled garden eggs, finely diced tomatoes, some hot peppers, and oil. It is served with rice, and is also very good.

Below is a photo of me pretending to pound fufu with a mortar and pestle. This is inside the kitchen of a fufu restaurant owned by the mother of a colleague. Samuel, who is seated, is turning the fufu in between strikes of the pestle. When the professionals do this, it is very fast (such that I wonder that people's fingers aren't crushed on a regular basis) and there is a rhythmic thumping sound of the pestle striking the fufu in the mortar. It is very impressive.

There is a lot of wonderful fruit here as well, but different than at home. The local bananas are smaller than the imported ones we are accustomed to, the oranges are green on the outside, the pineapples and mangoes are amazingly delicious, and the papaya plentiful.

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