h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A lekker entry on the Front Page - check it out, bru!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/plain/A4351402

I know a few others that might come in handy too ...

Thanks for that link. An interesting read.

So you guys eat mamaliga? (=pap?)

Ekook!!

Wonderful list. No wonder everyone can tell where I come from.....!!!

The old grannie. !!
AR80
Wed. 16/VI/2010 14.50 BST

Hey Willem, do you and your mother ever eat pap, or are you too toney for that? If you do, could you let me know how you flavour it? Operating a gluten free kitchen, I am always looking out for interesting ways to prepare gf carbohydrates.

Hi folks thanks for the comments!

Dmitri and Elektra, yes we eat 'pap'. I eat it a lot actually but I make it my own way. I don't know if this will be of any use to anyone else though because I am weird when it comes to food. I take three eggs and three cups of milk and mix that with one cup of mealie (=maize) meal. No salt gets added. I cook it and when it's cooked I mix in four slices of cheese (cheddar usually). Now this is very tasty for me, but it's a fairly high fat meal. But I'm an active person and I watch my weight, so for me (and along with all the other stuff I'm eating) it's not a problem.

More traditional ways of eating 'pap' is to simply cook it with water (or milk) and a bit of salt. That's how most folks eat it. You can vary it in consistency from almost like a thick soup ('slap pap'), to very firm ('stywe pap'). Hence the joke - what's a Free State Sandwich? A 'skeppie' slap pap in between two slices stywe pap. ('Skeppie' - a small helping of food such as you might ladle out with a large spoon.)

You can add some milk to your 'pap' after having cooked it as well, eating it as a breakfast porridge. You can also add some butter and sugar or honey. This is quite tasty. Then you eat it with a spoon.

When you eat stywe pap at a 'braai', you flavour it by adding things like gravy from the meat, or a kind of sauce we make with tomatoes. That is made simply by cooking the tomatoes together with onions. First cut up the onions and fry them a little bit; then take off the skins of the tomatoes and cook them in a pot along with the onions, slowly, so it doesn't burn. Cook until it's all soggy, and add a bit of sugar, and salt and pepper to taste. Pour it liberally over the pap.

Great recipes.

Grits are similar - you can have them with butter, salt and pepper, or milk and sugar. (I just don't, but hey, it's not obligatory.)

The Romanians made mamaliga (corn meal porridge), and ate it with sour cream, or with chicken gravy, or...yummy.

The pap sandwich reminded me of the Yorkshire treat, chip butties...

And of this song. I'll give you the link to Sheffield's most famous fan singing it, just click on the little box:

http://www.themightybean.com/sheffieldunitedfc.htm

Heh Heh! Sean Bean the biggest Sheffield United Fan eh? At least I can tell you this, I sing a heck of a lot better than he does!

I would say Africa is very indebted to the Native Americans since corn meal porridge is a staple food for an enormous number of people over here. I just read an interesting thing on Wikipedia about cooking maize meal with an alkali to improve its nutrition ... it's called 'nixtamalisation'. Apparently because this is not traditionally done here in Africa, occasional instances of malnutrition occur in people relying too much on maize porridge.

Hey Mamaliga (pity we can't put on all those upside-down accents and thingies here!) sounds like what we call 'mealie bread'! Anyways speaking of sour cream, my dad used to make 'sour pap' which is made with fermented yeast ... it is extremely tasty. I don't know if my mom knows the recipe ... I'll ask her.

Chip butties?! Heh heh! I didn't even know they made that! What a health food ...

I've heard of grits a lot and now read about it as well. Very similar to 'pap' also in its variety of forms and uses. I'm going to try over here making me some pap with very coarse maize meal ... I generally like coarse meals better than smooth ones. Another thing we have here is called 'stampmielies' which are the white corn kernels that also are used for making 'pap', but instead of having been ground, they've been pounded into not-very-small bits. I love them ... haven't eaten any in a while ... will ask my mom about them!

As an ex-meat eater I've tried many things to make vegetable foods more interesting - and I'll try a lot more! As far as food combining is concerned, anything goes. Another funny thing I did with 'pap' was too cook up spinach leaves in it - and then melt cheese into it when it was done. I'm perhaps unusual but I always loved spinach.

Lovely receipes all of you. thank you very much.

I must try and get some mieliemeal, but I have got some polenta which I think is the same thing. Eat well my friends. and I had forgotten about stywe pap willem. tt really is good when one cuts it up and eats it with something savoury.
suggest to Mum that she puts in garlic and thyme into her onions and tomato. Makes a wonderful difference. !! Garlic is one of the healthiest herbs. And keeps one very healthy and helps one overcome lots of old age ills. !!

Bon appetit,

Christiane
Alsoram 80
Thursdat 17th June 2010 17.10 bST

, you two.

Willem, that food business is called 'The Columbian Exchange'. We teach the kids about it in history class.

New foods and animals (and diseases, unfortunately) went both ways.

Or, why people in Europe now eat tomatoes and potatoes (but feed maize to their horses), and we got peanuts, and okra, and rice, and...

Thank you, Africa.

It´s great that some good came out of North and South America! I too am very happy that we got okra from you all. It is terrific and soups and fried in corn meal as well.

I am glad that you can sing Willem but , it´s unfair that you have so many artistic talents! That is great that you can share so many of them.

Hi freinds,

Am I allowed to write on this very exclusive thread?

Would elektra please tell me how okra is cooked?

It is always slimy and ugh disgusting when I try and prepare it.

Thanks

CME
AR80
Friday 18th June 2010 7.16 BST

Hello Christiane! This is by no means an exclusive thread - of course you can write here!

Hey I don't even know Okra! I will keep my eye out for it in the supermarkets though ...

Elektra I just wish one day I could get to make music that I can share with the world!

Hello Christiane!

I perhaps misrepresented my culinary skills. I cheated by using frozen okra, sticking it in a plastic bag, then pouring in corn meal and shaking it. Then I just dumped it into some hot oil on the frying pan. Also for soups, you can buy cut okra frozen. But perhaps frozen is the way to eliminate the slime factor.

Glad you are feeling well. Sorry about the French team losing though.

Elektra

Willem, what sort of music do you enjoy? Are you a folky? Do you play an instrument? Since you have such skill mastering the process of painting, I´ll bet that you could be an excellent musician as well.
Unfortunately I am too lazy or impatient to properly manage process.

This makes me a consumer who can play the radio as it were, but nothing else.

Elektra has a very good ear, and makes for a sharp listener.

She's also a pretty good art and literature critic, because she knows what she sees and reads. She has the uncanny ability to understand languages she cannot speak.

I spent a couple of years learning Romanian. She didn't. Three Romanians were talking a mile a minute at our place. I turned to translate, and she said: 'I got it.'

And she had.

A rare talent.

If you wash the fresh okra to remove the fuzzy outside, and then stew it, it won't be slimy.

If you slice it up, as we do around here, either toss it in cornmeal and fry it, or put it in soups or stews.

Any soup containing okra is really a 'gumbo'.

Well, thanks my friends, Elektra and Dimitri.

I thought that okra was not not indigenous to South Africa Willem so did not know why Elektra had mentioned it to you. !

I shall try it just once more - with your receipe Dimitri.
Boy was I upset with the French showing in the soccer last night against Mexico. They were rooted to the ground for pratically the whole match.

Impossible. Did I say that - but someone has added it!?!?????

Well I am off to watch the end of the USA/Slovenia match. A very great many surprises in this year;s Soccer World Championships. But isn't Table Mountain just the most beautiful Mountain you have ever seen.
Regards

Christiane
AlsoRan80
Friday 18th June 2010 16.29BST

Hi there again Dmitri, Elektra and Christiane!

As I understand it, Okra is more a thing of northeast and northwest Africa, not known at all well down here. I'm still keeping an eye out for it in the supermarket!

I'd love some day to try gumbo ...

OK as for music ... I like a great variety of different kinds of music. I'll say more in a later posting if people are interested. As for myself ... I sang in a choir when I was in school, and I also took piano lessons. Unfortunately a certain teacher spoiled my musical education. But I do have an electronic keyboard with which I play around from time to time. I'm not very good at it, though, I practice way too little.

I have composed a few songs, mostly when I was a kid ... they're all quite silly! At the moment, I am very busy with art, plant cultivation and writing, and haven't time to devote to musical composition, BUT I'm often developing little 'themes' with my keyboard, and then recording them and storing them on my computer, with the idea of later developing them into longer pieces.

I have some ambitions ... there's certainly a thing that I want to do, which is, a totally new kind of musical project, I don't know if anyone has ever even thought of this kind of thing. It will be intricately linked to my writing and art. But it's a very ambitious sort of thing ... you folks know I'm crazy, and perhaps this idea is crazy as well, but ... it's not out of the question. If I can achieve success with my writings then I will go into the music thing with full confidence. But it's going to be insanely difficult. For instance just *one* of the things I will need to do, is to invent a new language, that's tailor-made for singing ... and it's not going to be a 'simple' language because I want my music to be able to express things that are currently almost impossible to express using 'regular' music and language ... well, at least, the languages that I *know* at the mo.

The thing is, when it comes to music and art, I feel I can do almost anything ... I only need enough time. There's a clear priority ranking though: I wanted to achieve mastery in art, first - and I think I'm close to that; THEN master writing; and FINALLY devote myself to music. That's based on what I feel I can do best - I think of the talents I have, art comes first, and success there can give me the stepping-stone to writing, and success there, the stepping-stone to music.

Christiane, I'm sorry about the French! Over here, I'm just watching little bits of the soccer, and not really caring who wins or not. And I agree with you Table Mountain is beautiful! But I've not yet seen the real thing ...