This is a traditional Bantu-African meal comprising brown sadza, Iteru Hapwi perch and one of many varieties of peanut-butter sauces. The meal is eaten communally as a way of strengthening family and community bonds. The sharing of the food is a way of encouraging the spirit of sharing and communality. A word or two about the peanut butter sauce is in order. This is one type of food that can be lethal if not prepared properly. Peanuts are often infected with a fungal disease. The fungus deposits toxic chemicals that cause allergies. Interestingly, the way we have always prepared peanut butter is actually very effective when it comes to dealing with this problem. In the village, peanuts are shelled and sorted out in a very tedious manner. You will see a village woman seated on her rupasa reed mat throwing away peanuts with a green coating of fungus. After removing the infected peanuts, the remainder are roasted. Despite tossing away the peanuts infected with fungus, the typical village woman rubs the roasted peanuts to remove the outer coat of the peanuts. This coat if often contaminated with the lethal toxins from the fungus. If there are peanuts with coats that are not easily removed by rubbing between the palms, these peanuts are also thrown away. Thereafter, the roasted peanuts are initially pounded using a mortar and pestle followed by grinding with mill stones to yield a smooth paste of peanut butter. This meticulous procedure means that the resultant peanut butter is free of toxins from fungus. The peanut butter from the village is much, much safer than the processed peanut butter produced by machines that are incapable of sorting out each and every infected peanut. A few years ago I was startled when I realized I was allergic to peanut butter. When I told my siblings about it, they all laughed because that was the silliest thing they had ever heard me say. They knew I had grown up eating peanut butter without a problem. As luck would have it, I received a bottle of village-made peanut butter. I used it for cooking. Lo and behold, I did not have any allergic reaction. That is when it dawned on me that the simple woman in the remote African village was actually way clever than we realize when it comes to food technology and safety. I grew up eating safely produced peanut butter. What I was buying in the grocery store looked and tasted like peanut butter but my body rebelled against it. It was poison. Now I prepare my own peanut butter based on the processing method of the old women in my village. The poor peasant in an African village may look simple but do not let that fool you. She has knowledge on food safety that goes back into antiquity. With a fellow scientist, we have started capturing some of this knowledge to produce healthy foods. It is our way of using African ideas and knowledge to develop Africa again. All of us ought to do likewise because it is high time African ideas were used to solve Africas problems. This is the African factoid of the day, Im. Bvumavaranda BTechno Moyo. https://facebook/photo.php?fbid=10203352275987568&set=a.10203015091718172.1073741825.1231130056&type=1&theater¬if_t=like_tagged
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 09:24:45 +0000
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