The first picture that caught my eye when we walked inside the restaurant was a screaming child and a woman blowing into his mouth. The scene was so familiar. Me and my mom, and many more of my friends and their moms.
When we see our favorite food on the table in front of us, we can't stand it any longer and start eating it with our watery mouths. With the first spoon, we face a painful burning in our mouth instead of a delicious fulfillment. The dramatically funny movie begins that moment.
As a child, I used to experience this when I was eating pasta. No matter how much my mother warned me about it’s threatening heat, I would start eating it as soon as my mother's back was turned, and then I would scream and rush like a monkey in the kitchen.
My mother would come back with a grumble and make me take it out of my mouth. But as one of those strange human traits, when it was food I liked, I would never take it out. I would either ask my mother to cool it down by blowing into my mouth, which she wouldn't do, naturally, or I would drink water.
Another strange way to keep a hot food in your mouth and swallow it, or rather to avoid burning your mouth, is to turn the food right side up in your mouth. This is a common practice in Ghana, so they obviously felt the need to give it a name.
Pelinti.
It is a very childish and ridiculous human condition. It reminds me of some of the strange stories we were told as children to finish our food. Actually, it would be better to call them threats.
If you don't finish your food, it will cry behind your back! — I believed that food would cry, yes, unfortunately.
If you don't finish your rice, your husband will be ugly! — Torture for a girl.
My early memories of eating are not particularly positive, coming from a child who was forced to drink appetite syrups in order to eat. I therefore don't remember anything about pelinti; instead, I remember my well-known refusal to eat anything at all.
I can't forget the night that ended with my mother and father squabbling because I refused to eat the leek dish with minced meat, which my mother strongly believed to be useful and extremely delicious! Not eating this dish, which is one of my favorite dishes now, was a matter of war for me, and for my mother, it was obviously a matter of pride to make me eat this dish. My evenings would end in a family catastrophe on the days when I had leeks with minced meat. My poor father would suffer from it.
While leek was the scapegoat, cakes was the king of all foods. To this day, my favorite food is cake, with any ingredients.
Memories of food are both many and plentiful for all of us. There is a variety of food and a variety of people trying to eat it or get it eaten.
How is your memories of food?
Have a great weekend!
Till next week,
— Gulsun