Chop Fayne

Considering that I spend a significant amount of time each day thinking about, looking for, preparing, and cleaning up meals it is surprising that I haven’t written much about what I eat, or as it is said in Pidgin, chop.  I usually find it an enjoyable challenge to experiment making American food with Cameroon ingredients.  Thanks to my Mennonite cookbook, More with Less, and the Cameroon Peace Corps cookbook, Chop Fayner, I have recipes to make everything from laundry soap to Apple Pie.  I’m  also fortunate to live in a house with a refrigerator, a stove, oven, and a freezer, in a region in Cameroon with access to plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, and a white man store nearby to buy yogurt, cheese, and butter. 

My day usually begins with coffee and vanilla flavored powdered milk.  The coffee market in Cameroon is resurging after bottoming in the early 90’s.  My favorite kind of coffee, which I have only found in Kumbo, is called Every Sip a Safari.  It is my favorite not because of the taste, but because of what it says on the back of the package:

A wired galaxy of savored darkness

The swirling dark liquid in my cup, in my mouth.

Ah what soothing fire, a plague upon sleep this coffee is.

Seep sanity away, ye champion of caffeine.

Wither the coffee curves around blocks of ice in my cup

of a hot steam gallops from the hot liquid, I shall sip with affection and lust.

Sweep my stress away, ye champion of flavor.

Turn the jumbo into jingle.

Turn the swamp into a river.

Turn the woman/man into a lover.

Yet I plead to every God, and oath to every start, turn the water into coffee. 

What an ode to coffee!

That is the coffee package on the left, my French Press, and starbucks mug.  The mug was here when I moved into my house.  It brings a smile to my face to drink coffee from a starbucks mug even though I don't think there is starbucks on the African continent.

This is my vegetable mommy.  I buy tomatoes, onions, and pears (avocados) from her about two times a week.

This is me working in the farm.  Almost all of the women here plant, weed, and harvest by hand using that hoe. I usually don't help much, but provide a lot of comic relief as the African women pass by and laugh at the white girl trying to weed grass.

Picking pumpkin leaves for that night's dinner. I cooked the pumpkin leaves with tomatoes, onion, and salt and served with my version of fu-fu corn---cornbread!

Today I helped Emmanuela's family make ekwang. I call it a Cameroon version of manicotti, but instead of stuffing shells with cheese you stuff leaves with mashed yams.

We first started by washing the cocoyams,

destemming the cocoyam leaves,

 grating  the cocoyams into a fine mush,

putting into the leaves, rolling them,

and putting them into the pot and cooking it over the fire with tomatoes, onion, and crawfish.

Chop Fayne!

But I usually don't make Cameroon meals when I'm by myself.  Instead I make American food like pizza, tortillas and guacamole, lentil soup, cheese enchiladas, and bread.

Now that mangos are coming into season I'm beginning to experiment with the fruit.  The other day I made mango kuchen.  It is kind of like cobbler. 

In the picture is my locally made bread pan.  I went looking for a bread pan at the white man store and they brought me to a car part store where a man was making things out of sheet metal.  So yes, my bread pan is made out of sheet metal. 

I'm realizing that cooking in Cameroon is a good metaphor for life--making the most of what you have while adapting to the local context. 

Good food should be grown on whole soil, and be eaten whole, unprocessed, and garden fresh.

Helen and Scott Nearing

Living the Good Life