smacky and bucky

I entered the house yesterday afternoon after mowing the lawn and heard the beep of the answering machine. Laura had taken the day off to hang out with a college friend back in town for a visit from California. Since her college friend became my Peace Corps friend a year later (I met Laura through this common friend we had), Laura was calling to ask me to meet them downtown for dinner. A few other girls from our Peace Corps group were also meeting them. I said okay, got cleaned up, and drove into the city for dinner at an African restaurant.

I ended up seeing three other Peace Corps folks at dinner, one I hadn't seen in about four years and one I hadn't seen in about eight years, so that was fun (six women and me at the table). During a conversation about dating it occurred to me that I had dated one of them while we were in Africa. For about eight months I guess, until she returned to America with sudden health problems. It wasn't exactly a repressed memory, and it wasn't a big secret, as everyone at the table knew about it (yes, including Laura), it had just been so long ago (nine years ago!) that my first thought seeing her wasn't about our "history" at all. It wasn't weird or anything (we had invited her to our wedding three years ago, so it's not like we weren't all friends), it was just a little strange to realize that she was the first ex-girlfriend my wife has met.

We're all at different points in our lives right now. Two of us are married, one has a baby, two are still single and going to keg parties on the weekends, one is finishing her master's degree.

But never mind all that. I'm sure what you're really curious about is where we ate and what I had! We went to Bukom Cafe, which has expanded its menu since I last went there, thankfully. West Africa is a very large region as a whole (almost as large as the United States), so a two-page menu doesn't really begin to cover the diverse items you can get over there. I had Red-Red, a spicy dish popular in Ghana made with red pepper and black-eyed peas. When it's good, it's amazing. We had it in a variety of places when I was traveling around Ghana with a buddy for six weeks. The best we had was in the cafeteria of a bank in a small town. Here's an authentic sounding recipe, from congocookbook.com (I altered the recipe to make it vegetarian. I find dried fish to be REALLY unnecessary to this meal):

What you need
two to three cups dried cowpeas (black-eyed peas)
one cup red palm oil (or vegetable oil)
one or two onions, thinly sliced
two or three ripe tomatoes, quartered
cayenne pepper or red pepper
salt and black pepper
several ripe or near-ripe plantains (but not overly ripe)

What you do

Clean the black-eyed peas in water in a large pot. Soak them in water for at least an hour or overnight. After soaking them, rub them together between your hands to remove the skins. Rinse to wash away the skins and any other debris. Drain them in a colander.

Place the black-eyed peas in a large pot, fill with water to just cover the peas. Bring to a slow boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer until the peas are tender, thirty minutes to an hour. When cooked, the peas should be moist, but not standing in water.

While peas are cooking: Heat oil in a skillet. Fry the onions until slightly browned, then add tomatoes. Mash and stir the mixture to form a sauce.

Stir the onion-tomato mixture into the black-eyed peas. Simmer for ten minutes. Add salt, black pepper, and cayenne or red pepper to taste.

While peas and sauce is simmering: Prepare Fried Plantains. Serve peas and plantains side by side on a plate.