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12th November, 2011
Playing Doctor When You Are Not One? (1)
Olive oil – If the acquisition of knowledge does no one any harm then by all means let us add more to what we have in store.
As cooking oils go, this one pressed from the fruit of the olive tree, and which now forms the cornerstone of the storied Mediterranean diet, rates the highest in nutrients.
What is more, olive oil, which is pressed in three different grades - regular, virgin, and extra virgin - is the lowest in cholesterol and saturated fats. Palm oil packs a whopping eighty percent in saturated fats, coconut eighty seven, and olive oil only fourteen. Virgin and extra virgin olive oils, used mostly for dressing salads or pasta dishes, cost the earth. Unless you have the palate of a connoisseur or want to show off the way parvenus do, my advice to you is to stay with regular.
One more thing: Years before the virtues of olive came to be sung, the advice to those who frequented cocktail parties was to eat as many of the olives served before touching alcohol. The reason? The findings of medical science were that oil in the fruit, or a teaspoon of olive oil coats the stomach lining, making it less impervious to the boozy effects of alcohol than those drinking without it.
What I have told you thus far sums up the benefits of oil of olive. Anyone who peddles this oil as having sacramental or spiritual value is talking rot, selling you snake oil. The only reason olive oil gets honourable mention in the Bible is that, it is as indigenous to the Mediterranean as palm oil is to the tropics, lard to the Hungarians, and vegetable oil is to the Western world. And where do most of the action in the Bible takes place but in the Mediterranean?
A few years ago, a niece of mine bought me fish. Taking pity on an uncle who lives alone, she offered to fry them for me. I declined the offer, telling her I was going to cook it in olive oil flavoured with lemon grass. Unglued by this piece of information, she nearly fell out of her chair. Fish cooked in olive oil? Routine for me but not for her.
Before sundown, practically everyone in her neighbourhood had heard of this ‘sacrilege’ I was committing, wanted me to do penance. I suffered that indignity.
This year, arthritis has taken complete control of my ten fingers. All I had to do to relieve myself of the excruciating pain was to take extra strength aspirin. Not being one for pills, unless the pains are debilitating, I have been suffering needlessly.
When she heard of what I was going through, a woman promoted in these parts as a spiritualist of the highest order, sent word I was to buy a bottle of olive oil, send it to her to anoint it with prayers, after which I was to rub my hands everyday with the oil.
The hell I would. If that woman could pray over a bottle of olive oil to give it curative powers what stopped me from praying over a bottle of palm oil to give it the same powers? If you detect a note of sourness in my voice it is because I am from the old school. You wanted something and wanted it badly you worked hard toward its achievement, hoping and praying that the good Lord would bestow His blessings on it.
The promise of miracles didn’t exist. Today, when I cast my eyes round, hard work is on the moribund. Every second person you meet believes in miracles, and is in consultation with a spiritual this or that.
What this has done is create an atmosphere which allows for hordes of self-appointed prophets (Damnation) Archbishops, bishops, Papa Sofo’s and Maame Sofo’s all hoodwinking the rich, the middle class and the poor. You want a bottle of anointed olive oil? They are available everywhere.
One government after another knows that these charlatans are making money hand over fist by exploiting the public, and paying no taxes for their booty. Governments can intervene to stop this foolishness, but caught in the fear of losing votes if they took measures to protect those that fall for the snake oil, they allow the thievery and the foolishness to go on unabated. If oil has any healing properties it is in the eating of it.
It’s only external use is to rub it into the skin. Parts of the body will itch initially but get used to you eventually. Skin is skin. It does not matter whether the skin is male or female. Unfortunately many men think taking care of the skin is strictly female.
Here is a good tip for the women; if the object of your affections is a man whose skin seesaws between sand paper and crocodile back, do him a big favour this coming Christmas. Buy him a bar of soap milled with olive oil and let him stay with it. In three months you would want that skin, now as soft as a baby’s bottom, to be rubbing against yours every day. No charge for the tip.
A Ga folly, gbe akla, exposed Forty, fifty years ago, fat was in. In the eyes of the majority, being fat was a sign of prosperity. To call someone fat, plump, or fleshy, gained you their appreciation. You had recognised they were living well. No one took umbrage at your calling him fat.
A man who carried my present weight - 165 pounds - was harangued for being pathetically thin, told to put some meat on his bones so that the woman in his life could hold on to his love handles during …..(you know!) Today the pendulum has swung so much to the left that there are probably as many men as there are women who are self-conscious about their weight, more for cosmetic than health reasons.
I am not beating the drums for a tribal warfare, but here is why I am dancing all over the moon that a Ga fallacy has been exposed. Of particular interest here is that once you take away okra and bambara beans, more predominant in the Ga kitchen than in the Fante, the dietary habits of the two tribes are the same. Yet there is a remarkable difference in the dietary habits of the two tribes that we should not let go unnoticed, and you find it in kenkey. To a Fante, kenkey is a matter of course. To a Ga, however, kenkey is practically sacrosanct, something on which a tribal identity is almost built.
In his last book, I believe, the Nigerian playwright and critic, Wole Soyinka, warns that the one thing you don’t ever fool around with his countrymen over is egba or gari. The same can be said of the Gas and their “kon.” “Kon” comes with its own set of rules. Preferably, it should be eaten ‘klaklakla’, straight off the fire on which it was cooked. Never should it be ‘bodobodo’, running to mush. It should come from the bottom of the heap, not the top; and unlike Fante kome the Ga kon should be salted.
The fuss that the Gas make over “Kon”, and it is a royal fuss, is the same abroad. If a Ga in the United States of America, someone with whom you are on very good terms, suddenly gets snappish with you for no apparent reason, chances are good it is due to a few days of deprivation of “kon”, shito lo, which in the States can be substituted with a tin or two of sardines, corned beef, or a pot of steamed crabs - crabs and that obligatory puddle of uncooked holy trinity sauce.
Never retaliate his going off on you without provocation. In a few days, sated on kon and what goes with it, he will be back on your phone, all smiles and asking “Kyei nu, te te?” Well, te te yourself. Now let us get straight to the point.
As cooking oils go, this one pressed from the fruit of the olive tree, and which now forms the cornerstone of the storied Mediterranean diet, rates the highest in nutrients.
What is more, olive oil, which is pressed in three different grades - regular, virgin, and extra virgin - is the lowest in cholesterol and saturated fats. Palm oil packs a whopping eighty percent in saturated fats, coconut eighty seven, and olive oil only fourteen. Virgin and extra virgin olive oils, used mostly for dressing salads or pasta dishes, cost the earth. Unless you have the palate of a connoisseur or want to show off the way parvenus do, my advice to you is to stay with regular.
One more thing: Years before the virtues of olive came to be sung, the advice to those who frequented cocktail parties was to eat as many of the olives served before touching alcohol. The reason? The findings of medical science were that oil in the fruit, or a teaspoon of olive oil coats the stomach lining, making it less impervious to the boozy effects of alcohol than those drinking without it.
What I have told you thus far sums up the benefits of oil of olive. Anyone who peddles this oil as having sacramental or spiritual value is talking rot, selling you snake oil. The only reason olive oil gets honourable mention in the Bible is that, it is as indigenous to the Mediterranean as palm oil is to the tropics, lard to the Hungarians, and vegetable oil is to the Western world. And where do most of the action in the Bible takes place but in the Mediterranean?
A few years ago, a niece of mine bought me fish. Taking pity on an uncle who lives alone, she offered to fry them for me. I declined the offer, telling her I was going to cook it in olive oil flavoured with lemon grass. Unglued by this piece of information, she nearly fell out of her chair. Fish cooked in olive oil? Routine for me but not for her.
Before sundown, practically everyone in her neighbourhood had heard of this ‘sacrilege’ I was committing, wanted me to do penance. I suffered that indignity.
This year, arthritis has taken complete control of my ten fingers. All I had to do to relieve myself of the excruciating pain was to take extra strength aspirin. Not being one for pills, unless the pains are debilitating, I have been suffering needlessly.
When she heard of what I was going through, a woman promoted in these parts as a spiritualist of the highest order, sent word I was to buy a bottle of olive oil, send it to her to anoint it with prayers, after which I was to rub my hands everyday with the oil.
The hell I would. If that woman could pray over a bottle of olive oil to give it curative powers what stopped me from praying over a bottle of palm oil to give it the same powers? If you detect a note of sourness in my voice it is because I am from the old school. You wanted something and wanted it badly you worked hard toward its achievement, hoping and praying that the good Lord would bestow His blessings on it.
The promise of miracles didn’t exist. Today, when I cast my eyes round, hard work is on the moribund. Every second person you meet believes in miracles, and is in consultation with a spiritual this or that.
What this has done is create an atmosphere which allows for hordes of self-appointed prophets (Damnation) Archbishops, bishops, Papa Sofo’s and Maame Sofo’s all hoodwinking the rich, the middle class and the poor. You want a bottle of anointed olive oil? They are available everywhere.
One government after another knows that these charlatans are making money hand over fist by exploiting the public, and paying no taxes for their booty. Governments can intervene to stop this foolishness, but caught in the fear of losing votes if they took measures to protect those that fall for the snake oil, they allow the thievery and the foolishness to go on unabated. If oil has any healing properties it is in the eating of it.
It’s only external use is to rub it into the skin. Parts of the body will itch initially but get used to you eventually. Skin is skin. It does not matter whether the skin is male or female. Unfortunately many men think taking care of the skin is strictly female.
Here is a good tip for the women; if the object of your affections is a man whose skin seesaws between sand paper and crocodile back, do him a big favour this coming Christmas. Buy him a bar of soap milled with olive oil and let him stay with it. In three months you would want that skin, now as soft as a baby’s bottom, to be rubbing against yours every day. No charge for the tip.
A Ga folly, gbe akla, exposed Forty, fifty years ago, fat was in. In the eyes of the majority, being fat was a sign of prosperity. To call someone fat, plump, or fleshy, gained you their appreciation. You had recognised they were living well. No one took umbrage at your calling him fat.
A man who carried my present weight - 165 pounds - was harangued for being pathetically thin, told to put some meat on his bones so that the woman in his life could hold on to his love handles during …..(you know!) Today the pendulum has swung so much to the left that there are probably as many men as there are women who are self-conscious about their weight, more for cosmetic than health reasons.
I am not beating the drums for a tribal warfare, but here is why I am dancing all over the moon that a Ga fallacy has been exposed. Of particular interest here is that once you take away okra and bambara beans, more predominant in the Ga kitchen than in the Fante, the dietary habits of the two tribes are the same. Yet there is a remarkable difference in the dietary habits of the two tribes that we should not let go unnoticed, and you find it in kenkey. To a Fante, kenkey is a matter of course. To a Ga, however, kenkey is practically sacrosanct, something on which a tribal identity is almost built.
In his last book, I believe, the Nigerian playwright and critic, Wole Soyinka, warns that the one thing you don’t ever fool around with his countrymen over is egba or gari. The same can be said of the Gas and their “kon.” “Kon” comes with its own set of rules. Preferably, it should be eaten ‘klaklakla’, straight off the fire on which it was cooked. Never should it be ‘bodobodo’, running to mush. It should come from the bottom of the heap, not the top; and unlike Fante kome the Ga kon should be salted.
The fuss that the Gas make over “Kon”, and it is a royal fuss, is the same abroad. If a Ga in the United States of America, someone with whom you are on very good terms, suddenly gets snappish with you for no apparent reason, chances are good it is due to a few days of deprivation of “kon”, shito lo, which in the States can be substituted with a tin or two of sardines, corned beef, or a pot of steamed crabs - crabs and that obligatory puddle of uncooked holy trinity sauce.
Never retaliate his going off on you without provocation. In a few days, sated on kon and what goes with it, he will be back on your phone, all smiles and asking “Kyei nu, te te?” Well, te te yourself. Now let us get straight to the point.
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