I remember Mom’s kitchen, the way it was 20 years ago.
The space was not that much, only enough room to hold a medium sized
refrigerator, an L-shaped counter top that held the stoves and fitted a
small-sized aluminum sink where all household dishes were cleaned, lots of
overhead shelves, a grinding machine that uses an installed sharp plates within
its grinding box to chop and blend large quantities of food material, stone
tablets for manual grinding, and a back door to a tightly packed pantry, built
by Dad to hold all the extra kitchen essentials. This kitchen space became the classroom for
my life education, and when I reflect, I am surprised by how much I learned.
Respect, loyalty, love, care for myself and others, patience, perseverance,
diligence, hard work, name it, my mom taught me all without having to say anything,
in her dingy, cramped 2-in-1 kitchen and pantry.
 |
| Blood leafy vegetable |
I may have been through school several times, but none
of the education I have received has been as effective in teaching me life
values as was my experience growing up slicing onions and washing dishes for
Mom. I am a hard worker, I spend 60 hours every week doing what I do, but I learned
all this way back. Mom instructed – chill the drinks, mop the floors, clean the
sink, empty the trash, peel the yams, hand-grind the melon seeds, hand-blend
the pepper and tomatoes, clean the dishes and dinner table, drop-off items to
the family friend 3 miles away, and be back in time to pound the yams. You know
how. Dad gets upset when dinner is not served at 6 pm. There were no electrical
kitchen machines, so I think back about it now and shudder. What I must
complain about today is nothing compared to what I went through in Mom’s
kitchen, yet I did them all then cheerfully, sometimes singing along.
My first day in graduate school, the graduate
coordinator remarked: “Here we judge students not only from their aptitude and
grades, but by the complete and efficient use of all their senses. The ability
to use your hands, smell and sight, while not losing track of all that’s going
on around you, makes you successful in this field.” * I smiled to myself as I
mastered my senses in Mom’s kitchen. I learned to smell the burning soup before
it started burning, I knew the amount of salt I was adding by the way it felt
between my thumb and index fingers, I could tell the meat was cooked just by
looking at it. I remembered Mom making different meals without a cookbook nor
recipe to follow, and whenever she repeated the dish, it always tasted exactly
like the previous one–so tasty and delicious, I would always ask for more. She
managed to pull off this feat with no measuring spoons nor cups, just by the
efficient use of all her senses, just as my chemistry graduate counsellor
encouraged me to do 20 years later.
 |
| Tomatoes |
 |
| Soyabeans |
Twenty years ago, I learned the power of healthy
eating. Mom made everything fresh–no processing, no preservatives. We had a house
garden where we grew tomatoes, peppers, several herbs and leafy greens like
dandelions or wild lettuce, Amaranth (**efo tete), water leaf, basil leaf
(**efinrin), bitter leaf (**ewuro), **amunututu, and a host of others. We would
pick up quantities required for only one day, and leftovers are usually
consumed the next morning for breakfast. I can comfortably say I never had any
processed food while living at home. I did not even know what it meant at the
time. Our meat was delivered by the butcher as per schedule, fresh from the
slaughter house and we would prepare them as soon as they came in, with spices
and herbs handpicked from the backyard garden. We had a chicken coop where we
raised chickens from where we got a constant supply of fresh eggs. We would
have a chicken dinner when we thought one of the chickens was of age and egg
production has considerably slowed down. We would slaughter them ourselves,
moisten them in boiling water, pluck their feathers, salt them to remove excess
blood, and cut them ready for cooking. It was a delicate process with which
every family member was part of, and these activities made our family time together
even more enjoyable. For my home then, the idea was that it had to be fresh to
be healthy, and for a very long time this was the practice.
Later in life, my parents decided to have a reduced meat-based
diet, so we sought plant alternatives. Our religious beliefs must have played a
role in this decision. As Adventists, we conformed to the Jewish dietary kashrut law and ate kosher foods. Adventists and Jews both believe only certain animals
should be eaten and there are strict guidelines according to shechita laws for their slaughter. My
parents, however, maintained that flesh was permitted for slaughter and human
consumption only after the biblical flood, when all plants, seeds, and herbs
had been destroyed by water, and as humans, our original diet must have been
strictly plant-based. Mom later invented this delicious meat substitute purely from
soybeans, and it tasted even better than regular meat. When my mom realized we
all loved the soy meat as we affectionately called it then, she limited the
meat deliveries to once a week. Afterwards we made lots of soy variations – soy
pancakes, soy buns, soy bread, etc. You see, my Mom was a class apart when it
comes to culinary skills, and she always found amazing ways to make our almost
plant diet enjoyable. My parents’ diet now has little or no meat, except for
the occasional special family get-together moments or when they must entertain
guests, and its usually home-raised chicken, freshly slaughtered and cooked. To
this day, in their quiet country home, they preserve their backyard garden, now
a lot bigger as they work at it full time. During my last visit before finally
moving to Canada, I remember getting bananas and pawpaws, a live chicken and
fresh eggs, all from their backyard garden.
 |
| Pawpaw |
Today, food topics have become a mainstay in public
attention and discourse. ‘You are what
you eat’, we are constantly told. So, popular tags like organic, grass-fed,
antibiotic-free, non-GMO, etc. have emerged on our food items. The eggs I buy
are organic, free-range, grade A brown eggs raised exclusively from hens that
live in an open-concept barn environment where they are free to roam, feed, and
nest.’ I have to pay a premium for that fancy tag. The packing goes further to
tell me the calories, sodium, and lipid content per egg – phew. My Mom does not
know what GMO or lipid means, but she understands that adding chemicals –
pesticides, antibiotics, preservatives, or whatever, to food items just messes
them up, and messes you up when you consume them. She knew without being an
expert on crop genetics that modifying food matter gives them a new identity,
and it becomes unpredictable what they will do to the body or the body will do
to them. She’s practiced organic consumption for decades before organic foods
became so popular. She knows healthy eating can increase life expectancy, maybe
that is why at over sixty years, she has enough vitality, freshness, and energy
to pass for twenty years younger. And because I would like to have her kind of bubbling
health when I get older, perhaps the biggest lesson I should take away from Mom’s
kitchen is this – eating healthy
means living healthy.
*paraphrased – exact phrase not remembered
**local Yoruba names – The Yoruba are a large national Nigerian group found especially in
western/south-western Nigeria and they speak the ‘Yoruba’ language.
Olasunkanmi Olaoye
PhD Student Chemistry, University
of Toronto
Guest Contributor,
ECVOntario, SEDRD, University of Guelph