Subj : food exchange
To : JIM WELLER
From : Ruth Haffly
Date : Wed Jul 20 2022 15:29:37
Hi Jim,
JW> one semester I shared an apartment with two Nigerian guys.
RH> That must have been quite an experience. It sounds like it would have
RH> been an interesting time to explore the food culture--learn from them
RH> and teach them about Canadian cooking.
JW> Oh we did indeed teach each other. One guy was from the south, so he
JW> had a Christian background. His parents were quite wealthy and he was
JW> familiar with British cuisine and customs in general. The other guy
JW> was from a small town in the north, a Moslem and on a government
JW> scholarship. He was not very worldly at all. I made cure that they
JW> both learned all about real Canadian food like KD, KFC, pizza and
JW> chinese takeout. [g]
Have you stayed in contact with those guys? It would be interesting to
know how true to what they grew up with, then learned from you their
cooking and eating stayed over the years. BTW, we had our first Tim
Horton's doughnuts last month on our way up to VT--stoppped at a shop to
stretch our legs and bought a couple of maple cream filled. Turned out
to be a vanilla cream with maple icing. We rated them somewhere between
Krispy Kreme (higher end) and Dunkin' Donuts (lower end).
JW> Chris's favourite weekend meal, made in large quantities so that
JW> there would be lots of leftovers:
JW> A meat stew combining beef short ribs, pork hocks and chicken
JW> thighs.
JW> A spicy fairly thin tomato sauce.
JW> A pot of greens.
JW> A starch dish; rice, corn meal mush, mashed potatoes, cassava,
JW> taro, plantains or yams (real yams, not sweet potatoes).
Lots of left overs means just reheating during the week, not much
cooking effort required. (G)
JW> Jedeh learned to tolerate the pork hocks eventually because Chris
JW> would not give them up. He had to because he couldn't/wouldn't cook.
JW> Cooking was women's work after all.
Sometimes you've just gotta give in, like it or not.
JW> Fufu is a stiff dough eaten with the fingers (right hand only). You
JW> scoop up a little bit, roll it into a ball the size of a golfball,
JW> cup it in the palm of your hand and press a depression in the top of
JW> it so that you can scoop up a little sauce or soup.
JW> This was Chris's shortcut version using cheap, easy to find
JW> Canadian ingredients:
