Happy Cross-Over
Happy New Year to all my fans. Thank you for your commitment to this column; thank you for your incessant e-mails which keep flooding my inbox. You make this column rock! Have the best of 2014. I wish for you all the good things you wish for yourself!
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Oooooooooooh! I’ve been yawning all morning. I still haven’t slept enough to defray the arrears owed my eyes. How did you spend the first day of the year? Mine commenced with a chorus by our parish priest at exactly 12 midnight when the count-down to 2014 ended.
We sang, danced, hugged each other, and prayed to thank the Lord for crowning the year with His goodness. By half past twelve service had closed, and we were on our way home.
In forty-five minutes, we had arrived at our apartment; Naa Atswei was still sleeping innocently from the previous year. Her sound deep sleep was just a right opportunity for Obodai and I to welcome each other into 2014 in grand style.
We spent time together praying and thanking the Lord for bringing us thus far, and then I can’t really tell who started what. But by the time we said the “amen”, we were already re-enacting our nuptial “salsa”. Hahahaaaa, it was a real good crossing over which almost immediately knocked Obodai into deep sleep.
Truth be told, one of the best things that could happen to any mother of a baby or a toddler is when the infant sleeps so soundly on a “good” night and both father and mother are crazily “prepared”.
The acquired energy whisked me off to the kitchen quite early to start preparing the meals with which to serve my in-laws who were coming over to spend the afternoon with us. Aprapransa, Mpɔtɔnpɔtɔ, abom with apem ampesi, fufu with beef and dried fish-founded soup were listed on the menu of the day.
I didn’t want to prepare anything continental since most people would have had enough of the “rices” and chickens, et cetera during the Christmas festivities.
In a space of say, 45 minutes, my palm soup which was to be used in the preparation of the Aprapransa was boiling. Thanks to Afimaa, my cousin who comes over to help me once a while with my domestic chores.
During her last visit, she pounded some palm fruits, took out the nuts and froze the fleshy extract for me. So before we left home for the half night service, I had put that which she iced up out to thaw. I also steamed the meat before leaving home.
All I did at dawn was to add the desired amount of water to the “palm flesh”, sieve it and add to the steamed meat in the pot. In less than no time, the onions, pepper and tomatoes were blending seriously into my boiling soup.
My parents-in-law presently do not eat a lot of meat. So I made provision for tuna, salmon and then I steamed some fattened tilapia for them.
For the aprapransa, I obviously needed red kidney beans, crabs, and roasted maize flour/Tom Brown/kyekere. All those were ready too.
The soup was well cooked in less than two hours. I fetched about half a pot full off the boiling liquid into a bowl to store away, poured a reasonable amount of the Tom Brown into the rest of the soup on the stove, and began to stir with my wooden banku paddle.
As the Tom Brown and palm soup were thickening into a hardening paste, I added a bit of the fetched-away soup to aid with the softening and cooking of the meal.
I kept stirring the paste with bits of the soup till it was well cooked, and then served them into a large pyrex bowl. Aprapransa is best eaten hot, so I would microwave it just before my guests decide to eat.
All the while, I had been boiling the large Ada crabs I had ordered from the woman who usually supplies me with them. I don’t know how those crabs are reared, whether by natural or artificial means; but each of their cephalothorax (I mean the middle section of each crab) is so well endowed! You can open one to eat and be full. They are so big.
I then used the boiled crabs and fish to garnish the “pyrexed” aprapransa. In fact, time was only half past seven when I finished with that preparation, but my mouth watered so much at the sight of the meal, I couldn’t resist a helping. Having brushed my teeth in the course of dawn, I went for the go.
Obodai awoke to find me eating at that time of the morning and was quite surprised. He threw a friendly caution: “If this is how you are starting the year, then get ready to get shorter in height because those hips and stomach will have no other option than to expand outward”.
I only smiled because my eating heavy at that time of the morning was acting as some kind of breach to a New Year’s Resolution I had made.
Hmm! Sometimes I wonder if these resolutions are necessary at all. Some of us make them to break them. Anyway!
Then I went on to start the Mpɔtɔnpɔtɔ. I used five large cocoyams for the cooking. Peeling and cutting them into small chunks, I added some salt, one medium sized onions, pepper to taste, three large tomatoes and cooked them under not too high heat for about 30 minutes.
When the cocoyam was very soft, I added milled dried herrings to the content in the pot and stirred very well the mixture. I usually use powdered shrimps for Mpɔtɔnpɔtɔ but one of my sisters-in-law, who was to be our guest, was allergic to shrimps, so I had to resort to the powdered herrings which in itself is also very tasty.
Next, I blended the pepper, tomatoes and onions and stirred that in too. Then I added salt to taste. Mmmmmm, by the time I fried about half a ladle full of zomi to mix my Mpɔtɔnpɔtɔ with, I had eaten about two ladles full already. It was very tasty! Absolutely delicious!
My koobi laden abom and brodi ampesi was as one I had never prepared. By the time I laid the table in the afternoon, I simply knew that I would definitely score very high political points with my in-laws that afternoon. And I did! We talk about that feat later. I must go back to sleep.