Light Soup, Fufu and Diet Coke... It don't get much better than this

Living in Ghana can take a great deal of adjustment for an obroni. I know that for some, the main challenge is getting used to the lack of fast food restaurants like McDonalds, Taco Bell and (my New Jersey favorite) White Castle. In Ghana, you've got your choice of Papaye (chicken), Southern Fried Chicken (chicken), Chicken Inn (chicken) and Galitos (chicken) with a Pizza Inn (pizza) for a change of pace.

For other foreigners, the difficulty lies in the lack of one stop supermarket type shopping for meat, vegetables, milk, dairy, frozen food, canned goods, bread, etc., here you go to a green grocer for your vegetables, a butcher for your meat (cow meat or goat meat, and they'll cut the meat off whatever part of the carcass you point to), a cold store for your frozen foods. If you're lucky (and rich), you can buy at MaxMart, which has a little bit of everything, though you pay through the nose for it. For someone pinching pesawas, MaxMart is out of their league.

For still others, the issue was learning to enjoy the local foods. Now, my husband is Ghanaian, so as a family, we're used to the things we see boiling up in a pot on the stove. Funny, true story: Many years ago, when my husband lived in NYC at 3333 Broadway, his Ghanaian roommate invited an American lady friend home to dinner. That day, Wisdom was making a typical Ghanaian meal, a kind of very spicy soup with meat. Now, this lady friend happened to wander into the kitchen while Wisdom went to get something from the bedroom, and she remarked aloud to him how nice the soup smelled (and light soup does smell very good). So, she went over to the stove, opened the lid of the pot, and saw a rich tomato broth bubbling away. Mmmmm. She went to the drawer, grabbed a spoon to dip in and taste, and just as she did that, the goat head, teeth and all, bubbled up to the surface. Eeeeeekkkkkk! By the time Wisdom finished what he was doing, his lady friend was gone. Note to Ghanaians reading this: When inviting American friends over for light soup with goat meat, remember this story.

Anyway, I digress. Ghanaians believe in spicy food. Sorry, and with all due respect, Spanish, Indian, Thai, Chinese, got nothing on the "heat" that emanates from Ghanaian food. The logic is the hotter the food, the more you sweat, the more you sweat, the greater the evaporation on your body and the more you cool down. Internal air conditioning. Works for them. Not for me. Most everything that a Ghanaian eats is hot, and the peppers that they add to their soups is not for the faint of heart. Yes, we've got green peppers and red peppers and ordinary jalapenos, which are more likely going to go into my food. But the ones that really get the blood flowing is the scotch bonnet or the even more incendiary habaneros. How hot, you ask? Click the link to get an idea.

http://www.ushotstuff.com/Heat.Scale.htm

Oh, another aside if you don't mind, one of the forms of punishment (or torture, in my opinion), is the "peppering" of the eyes. It is still done here, though mostly in remote villages and typically by older people who believe in the discipline it invokes. It would certainly make me think twice about being naughty.

Anyway, light soup. I made some a few weeks ago for my husband. Sly had to bring the car to the mechanic, and it's not like you drop your keys in a night box and wait for a phone call saying the car's ready. Here, to avoid any potential problems, i.e, missing hub caps, fire extinguisher, hazard triangles, exchanged tires, etc., you wait with the car. Your physical presence also acts as a deterrent from your back seat becoming a shady comfortable bed during the mechanics' noon time siesta. So, Sly's waiting for the car, and I know he's going to be hungry when he comes home, cause there's no chop bar where he is.

There on the counter, beginning to soften a bit too much, is a big bowl of tomatoes bought at the market the other day. This is where Betty Crocker leaps into action. We've got the tomatoes, we've got hot peppers (naturally, no self-respecting Ghanaian family would be caught dead without them), we've got onions and ginger. In the freezer is some tilapia that Sly smoked and some okro (okra for you Americans) from our own plants out back. For spices, I've got ground red pepper, ground dried smoked shrimp, and sea salt from the village of Denu, which happens to be where my mother-in-law is from (the salt is so beautiful and white, you want to lick it off your palm... I know, I'm weird, but take a look at it, and imagine how nice it would be edged on a margherita glass!).


All the makings of a wonderful (I hope) soup. Put it all together, light soup with smoked fish. (Note, this picture is not mine, courtesy of Ghanaweb... had it been mine, that would have been Diet Coke!)




Sly said it was great, and loved being able to tell his friends that "Babs made it!" Of course, the proper accompaniment to this meal, as every Ghanaian knows, is fufu. I don't do fufu. I do eat fufu, I just don't make it. Fufu is not something you whip up on the stove in a kitchen. It is actually a two person job, and unless you're a professional, it can be dangerous. Only kidding. Well, a little. The fufu pounder risks aching shoulders and massive blisters on the palms from wielding the over-sized pounding stick (just ask my friend, Felicia, who is Ghanaian born but lived in relative splendor in NYC over the past decade) . The fufu turner risks burned (the cassava and plantain having just come from a pot of boiling water) and smashed (it's a matter of timing) fingers. Done properly, it is a wonderful soft smooth mass that goes down easily.

I found a video blog on fufu preparation, so if you're interested in the "real" way to make it, please click on the link. And no, not me in the picture at the end (I don't wear skirts).

http://youtube.com/watch?v=slnR67C_TAY

So, what did I miss most? Diet Coke. Those of you who know me from way back when, know that I was addicted to diet soda. I used to buy it weekly by the case, 3 for $10 from Giant, and would go through at least a 6 pack a day. Coming to Ghana, well, no Diet Coke. Regular Coke, Sprite, Fanta, Pepsi, Mirinda, even Crush. Once in a great while, you can find Coca Cola Light in a can, imported from the UK or the Middle East, for about $1 a can and it just didn't taste the same. Even so, when I felt the need this was salvation, and for me a great splurge, cause I'm really a bit tight fisted.

Then, about 2 weeks ago, the local Coca Cola bottler introduced, drum roll please, Coca Cola Light! Locally made and bottled, in plastic or glass. And get this, it tastes like TaB! Yeah! Those of you who are wondering, "What the hell is TaB?" Well, just the first (and best) diet soda invented! Though overshadowed by Diet Coke, it's still being produced in the US, but you've got to search for it. Yesterday, my wonderful husband bought me my very own crate of Coca Cola Light. Yippeee!!!!!

In my world, Ghana is now complete.