Recipes

Recipes for food that can be served at book club meetings for The Village of Waiting.

She set it down on the floor with the bowl, smiled, and went out without another word.   It was fufu - pounded manioc - a steaming, white shiny blob like bread dough floating in a greasy pool of reddish pepper sauce.

Students began appearing at my house with gifts of bananas or pineapples, and some of them learned English faster than I 'd thought possible.

I bought a hunk of fried cheese made from the cows of Fulani nomads who wandered the Sahel; in Kpalime, where there were no Fulani and no cows, it was a delicacy.

In the middle of the maze of leather stalls and used auto-parts stalls, the indoor food pavilion hoarded mounds of fruits and vegetables: cabbages, apples, breadfruit, mangoes, heads of purple lettuce and green lettuce  - a mirage of abundance.

In the evening, at the lodge, there were steaks and fruit salads and wine for the safariers, pleasant fatigue, much talk of the day's sightings. 

I've been a tourist before, I know what tourists do.  So I go to the Museo Picasso and see the Gaudi cathedral and eat churro a con chocolato on the Ramblas.