'Date Night'!!....Food, Music And Ghana,....In Africa!!

       I am so excited to be going to 'virtual' Ghana tonight!! :-) It's a trip hubby and I have been wanting to take for quite a while! We have very good friends who are from Africa. One couple is from Nigeria. (That's a part of the country that we'll have to visit on another trip.) And another couple is from Ghana! That's our stop tonight!!
       From 'Lonely Planet dot com' I found out that life in Ghana is public. In other words, people evacuate their homes and apartments every day to escape the stifling heat...Oh Well, I guess that rules out taking my new Chocolate Nut Brownie Shawl/Scarf with me. And it's too bad too, because it's finished!! :-) Let me show you!

       What do you think?! Does it look okay in the more muted colors?!...Anyway! It's not going with us on the trip tonight. I'm going to be listing it in the shop for sale sometime later today...before we leave.
     I'm gonna have to stick with fabric like this Ghanian fabric...

      (WomanShopsWorld)

        Something cool....that I could wear to the beach or somewhere like that.

       Although I'm sincerely not that much of a beach person, I do love the water. And Ghana has water all around the place!!

         Even the elephants love it!

       But what I'm most looking forward to in Ghana...as I do in most every other country we've ever been to!....is the food!!! ^_^ And guess what?!...I found out that I've been eating Ghanaian food for a long time and didn't know it!...And I already love it!! :-) Well, the things that I know about I mean...like...

      ...Red Red (left), {a mashed bean stew with spices that make it turn redish}, and fried plantains (right) in the above picture...Many a time has my hubby, who loves making them, fried up some plantains!

        Then he would remove them from the grease, pound on them a bit (with the bottom of a frying pan ^_^), and then re-fry them to make plantain chips, or banana chips as they call them sometimes.

       Plantains do sorta look like bananas, don't they?!...

      ...But they don't taste like em!! Not in this stage (above) especially!....But that's okay, because tastes aren't everything...{Who said that?! O_0}...When plantains are growing they produce beautiful banana flowers! This is what they look like!!

         I can find a flower anywhere, can't I?!! ^_^

       But there's more dishes with the plantains!!! :-) ....... Kelewele (which is a snack dish of fried plantains seasoned with spices)...

       In Africa, Kekewele is sold by street vendors, usually at night! 

           It's sometimes served with rice and stew, or peanuts...Isn't that interesting?!...And speaking of peanuts, the first dish our Ghanaian friends made for us when we were invited to their home one time was...what he called...Peanut Butter Soup!

          I think true Ghanian's call it Peanut soup. I remember that, after I got through 'sqinching' up my nose and saying: "What?! Peanut butter...in a soup?!...I don't know about that!"...I took a sip and.....loved it!! It was kinda spicy hot and tasty!

         In the picture above you see the peanut soup served alongside Fufu. Fufu is a staple food of West and Central Africa. It's a thick paste usually made by boiling starchy root vegetables in water and pounding with a mortar and pestle until you get it to the consistency you want it. 

        I've never tried, or heard of that. Nor have I heard of Fante Kenkey...

         It's fermented corn dough, wrapped in corn or plantain leaves and cooked into consistent solid balls....And then there's Jollof rice, called Benachin {meaning 'one pot'}...

      You can put just about any kind of meat, vegetables or spices in it...This is definitely something I have done before...many times!! Who knows, maybe I have some Ghanian roots and don't know it! :-)

       (melissatenpas)

        And then again,...seeing as all women in Ghana apparently have the ability to carry heavy loads on their heads,...maybe not!! I can carry heavy loads 'in' my head, but not on my head!! LOL

     Okay, so that's the food! What about the music?!...Well, I found a few songs I absolutely love!! YAY Youtube!! :-) I'll share a couple of the more fun ones with you tomorrow. But because I'm not on my date just yet, I'll leave you with this one for us ladies!
       If you wanna feel good about what you, as a woman, can do....no matter where you live in the world, EVEN GHANA!...you have to hear and see this video!!

Have a good weekend Everybody! I was gonna try to get all fancy and say 'goodbye' in the Ghanian language, but guess what?!...The official language of Ghana is the Colonial language of English! ^_^ So, since I know how to say 'goodbye' in that language already, I will.....Goodbye! :-) 

The Night We Have A Date

We're  married many years;
Too old to go to bed too late.
We sometimes sit and laugh about it,
on the night we have a date.

Every Friday night is ours;
Time we long anticipate;
When we eat what we've been craving,
on the night we have a date.

We let nothing interfere.
(I recommend this with your mate).
Just focus one night, every week,
as the night you have a date.