The plan for today was really simple—create magic in the
kitchen, which, and not to brag or anything, is pretty much something that just
flows naturally. As we doctors like to put it— it’s just at the spinal cord level.
To think that I went grocery shopping yesterday and went all
out— red plum tomatoes, kilos of mutton, croaker fish, vegetables, herbs and
spices, balsamic vinegar, you name it! The plan was to make myself some proper
home cooked smfn smfn, at least to cure the nostalgia I’d been feeling lately.
Heck! I was even feeling all mum-like and was considering taking some dinner
packs with me to work for my colleagues who would be on call with me
today.
I woke up this morning all geared up, ready to bring to life
the delicious steamed rice and peppered fish sauce I’d been imagining since
yesterday. This wasn’t going to take so much time—pretty much puree some
tomatoes and assorted peppers, marinate the croaker fish in mixed spices and balsamic
vinegar, dice the mutton and sauté, whip everything up and voila—magic!
But you see baa? In this life, this fickle pot of beans life
that we’re all living, there are some days that you just have to acknowledge
the undeniable fact that forces of darkness do exist, because that’s the only
thing that can explain the next series of events that took place.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve been paying attention up
until this point, you’ll recall that I mentioned that the menu for today was
supposed to be PLAIN, I repeat for emphasis, PLAIN-VIRGIN-UNDEFILED WHITE RICE.
That was until your girl here had a brain wave from god knows where and
decided, “you know what? Let me make it rice and beans instead”.
I’d just like to state for the record here, that since
moving to Abuja, all my attempts at cooking beans in this city have failed,
simply because the beans never gets properly cooked, and I don’t understand it
really. I’ve asked around to know if there’s a different species of beans
that’s sold here or something. I don’t get how a measly two cups of beans will cook
for 3hours+, and not even show signs of getting properly cooked.
Three times! Three times I’ve tried to cook beans here and
all three attempts ended up with me having to refill my cooking gas (which
would have just been refilled barely two weeks prior), and eating something
that looks like… well let’s just say it never quite looks like your usual homemade
porridge beans that goes down well with a big bowl of garri, milk and sugar.
So when the thought came into my head today, I told myself, “lai
lai, today this beans must done”.
I called my friend Queen, narrated my previous challenge
with the beans and asked if she knew any tricks (cos’ I was sure Queen would
have something safe and reasonable to suggest. Let’s not talk about my dear
friend Marvin who suggested I add some silver cutlery into the pot of beans
while it cooks. Funny thing is, in retrospect, I think he might have been on to
something, this species of beans might as well be on some werewolf shit)
and she said I should try soaking the beans in water for a bit first as this
would help soften it.
So off I went to soak beans in water, hot water I might add.
Queen said 30mins would do, but because I’m a firm believer that anything worth
doing is worth doing well and because I’m extra like that, I allowed it soak in water for an hour and
half. At this point, I was already imagining the delicious properly cooked and
soft beans I’d be eating with my rice today.
I started cooking the beans officially at about 10:30am.
Two hours later, and
I’m not kidding, I mean, a whole two hours later, Elder beans was not showing
signs of softening. I looked at the clock; it was almost the hour of 1:00pm.
Supposed to be on call this night and my call starts by 5:00pm, which means I have to
leave my house by 4:00pm, which basically means I have to start getting prepped
by 3:00pm.
So, I said to myself, “To hell with these beans, I’m going back to
the original plan while I’ve still got some time”.
Next thing was to puree the tomatoes, mixed peppers, garlic
cloves, ginger and onions.
I cut them all up, threw into the food processor, and hit
the “ON” button. The next sound I
heard wasn’t the perfect machine roaring sound I was expecting, naa, it sounded
like errrm…., you know the sound a balloon makes when it suddenly pops and all
the air inside starts to leak out? Yea, it sounded something like that, and no,
the tomatoes and companions were not getting all whipped into shape, not at
all. Rather, they were staring at me like “in your face bitch, you’re not getting us
today”. I took another look at the food processor and realized that somehow,
by some mysterious juju means, the motor base looked like parts of it were
coming undone.
I looked at the clock; it was past 1:00pm. I muttered under
my breath, “hell naa, I’m not losing this fight today”. I proceeded to
painstakingly chop the tomatoes and peppers into tiny bits, after all, that’s how
we used to do it back in the day when there were no food processors.
Everything was finally set to start making the sauce, but
first the tomato and pepper mix had to be dried up completely, so I set them to
start cooking. It was a full pot and this pot was big by the way, but I told
myself, give or take 30mins, all the water should have dried up.
Little did I know..
You see ehhn.. Some days, it’s like there’s a spirit (or
spirits) hovering over your pot in the kitchen especially when it comes to
steaming tomatoes till they dry up. You go sit down for a bit, by the time you
get back to the kitchen, they’ve added more water into the pot (they being the
spirits). You calculate that it’d probably take another 30mins and decide to go
watch a movie on your laptop. You return to the kitchen a second time and
GBAM!!! Everything yaff burn.
This was exactly what happened to me today.
I looked at the clock; it was 3:10pm.
In summary, in between attempting to cook a species of beans
that’s most probably a descendant of iron man for two hours while also
wondering if my cooking gas would pull a little magic trick of its own on me,
my food processor spoiling, my tomato and pepper puree refusing to dry up one
minute then burning the next minute, while trying to get all of this done in
time so I can prepare for my call, I can confidently say that the score for today was:
Alma's ex boyfriend’s
village people-- 1
Alma's village people-- 0.
(And I thought we ended the relationship on
mutual terms, smh, some people sef!)
Guess who has packed some mangoes in her bag to serve as
dinner for tonight?
xoxo!
Alma Rosenfield
Ps: This story was originally written at 3:45pm, 23/02/2020