A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
We are reading
Chef Sipho Mdlankomo shines in this really good interview. “Food is a means of expressing love and gratitude”, she says. (Today’s Traveller). MasterChef SA ceremoniously introduced Chef Sipho to South Africans in 2014. Her story, which we now know intimately, was inspiring then and remains inspiring now. It has been especially heartwarming to see her coming into her own and to bear witness to her meteoric career growth over the years.
Meals worth remembering, we enjoyed The Atlantic’s list of 12 Most Unforgettable Descriptions of Food in Literature (The Atlantic). It would have been good to see more African books on the list. So we found our own Chinua Achebe quotation to complement it.
Eat Maputo: Exploring the vibrant food of Katembe, Mozambique (Daily Maverick)
In South Africa, a seed librarian seeks ancestral knowledge ( Gastro Obscura).
Tracing The Diaspora of Food. Helen Rosner speaks to Jessica B Harris, author of High on a Hog (New Yorker).
We are listening to
This short podcast on The Distuging Food Museum was a source of unexpected joy. Some of our favourite foods including tripe and wallies & talkies aka head and feet made the list. This just goes to show that huge swathes of fellow humanoids are truly missing out of these delicacies. However, mouse wine, which is Chinese wine infused with dead mice is indeed tantalizingly disgusting! (Atlas Obscura)
Since we know you would love to hear more (who wouldn’t!?!), the Guardian has some pictures. And the New Yorker asks who gets to decide what food is disgusting. It was from this article that we learnt that the English word “disgust” comes from the Old French word “desgouster”, meaning “to put off one’s appetite”. Just like they say, ione man’s delicacy is another man’s desgouster indeed!
