rhmc24
Absent Comrade
My wife always complained I was too picky about food. I guess I am but I generally liked the native fare wherever I went. An exception was Tehran that seemed like the middle ages in 1956 when I went to prepare for Pan Am to start service. The only food I liked was their 'borscht' soup, thick & red, made of beets, cabbage, etc. Some years later I ordered borscht in Brooklyn Jewish restaurant & learned it must be ethnic-specific as it turned out to be a single boiled beet in a clear pink broth, served cold.
Married in France 1950, wife spoke excellent English Having grown up a ward of step mother of English-French dual citizen who spoke English as a child & went to school in UK couple years post WW2. Soon in Africa, Accra, Gold Coast (Now Ghana) steaming on the tropical Atlantic. In WW2 a USAF ferry stop en route to the Burma Road in China. We were put up a while in a ww2 barracks till we got into a hotel, only English par for the time. Almost nothing to do with our spare time other than the nice beach, we saw scores of natives dragging in their long fish nets with an occasional big rock lobster -- which we saw plentiful in the market. Wife lusted for lobster to celebrate our semi-anniversary & ordered a meal of lobster in the only descent eatery in town. We were crushed & flabbergasted when served canned lobster --- our first low point in our marriage we recalled as an example the next 65 years. On the positive side, one day we walked up the beach & found a source of mussels on the rocks. Found an old five gallon bucket and put it half full of mussels. At the hotel the African cooks refused to cook them. "Massa you no eat this, you be go die." The other guests, about ten English working types, were equally skeptical. Eventually Suzanne steamed them in the bucket with cut up onions and we started eating them. Before we were finished the English were convinced and helped finish them.
Next a wonderful few months, 1951 in Belgian Congo, wife & I rented a house in a former palm orchard that still produced palm nuts. Our native cook wanted to make "mwamba" for us; climbed Up a tree & harvested a clump of palm nuts like grapes but big & hard the nuts almost size of an egg. Every house had its palm oil extractor, something of s mortar & pestle of wood hollowed out to receive the pestle size of a baseball bat. Beaten to a pulp the oil is strained off & tough otherwise inedible tropical chicken parts boiled in it till tender. Served over rice, garnished with bits of tropical fruit it is still my recall of food-heaven. So popular with the English speaking community it was common to have a mwamba party Sunday afteroons, drinking beer, eating & lying on the floor sleeping it off. --- Pan Am had good hot meals in thermos containers put aboard Lisbon for Africa but down line was a shortage of fresh salads & pastries. Suzanne's energy & talent knew bakers work mostly at night & made a deal for pastries. At home she hired a cook-helper to make salads. Free of Pan am airfreight charges, She imported So. African eggs by the gross & Helman's Mayo by the case from the Firestohe installation up line in Liberia. Each flight had an incoming load message 5 to 7 hours ahead of arrival; she knew the amounts to have ready to put aboard. We had my salary plus foreign allowance that we lived on but her enterprise netted more income than mine. Excess eggs & mayo were given Pan Am personnel & some sold to local merchants---->
Married in France 1950, wife spoke excellent English Having grown up a ward of step mother of English-French dual citizen who spoke English as a child & went to school in UK couple years post WW2. Soon in Africa, Accra, Gold Coast (Now Ghana) steaming on the tropical Atlantic. In WW2 a USAF ferry stop en route to the Burma Road in China. We were put up a while in a ww2 barracks till we got into a hotel, only English par for the time. Almost nothing to do with our spare time other than the nice beach, we saw scores of natives dragging in their long fish nets with an occasional big rock lobster -- which we saw plentiful in the market. Wife lusted for lobster to celebrate our semi-anniversary & ordered a meal of lobster in the only descent eatery in town. We were crushed & flabbergasted when served canned lobster --- our first low point in our marriage we recalled as an example the next 65 years. On the positive side, one day we walked up the beach & found a source of mussels on the rocks. Found an old five gallon bucket and put it half full of mussels. At the hotel the African cooks refused to cook them. "Massa you no eat this, you be go die." The other guests, about ten English working types, were equally skeptical. Eventually Suzanne steamed them in the bucket with cut up onions and we started eating them. Before we were finished the English were convinced and helped finish them.
Next a wonderful few months, 1951 in Belgian Congo, wife & I rented a house in a former palm orchard that still produced palm nuts. Our native cook wanted to make "mwamba" for us; climbed Up a tree & harvested a clump of palm nuts like grapes but big & hard the nuts almost size of an egg. Every house had its palm oil extractor, something of s mortar & pestle of wood hollowed out to receive the pestle size of a baseball bat. Beaten to a pulp the oil is strained off & tough otherwise inedible tropical chicken parts boiled in it till tender. Served over rice, garnished with bits of tropical fruit it is still my recall of food-heaven. So popular with the English speaking community it was common to have a mwamba party Sunday afteroons, drinking beer, eating & lying on the floor sleeping it off. --- Pan Am had good hot meals in thermos containers put aboard Lisbon for Africa but down line was a shortage of fresh salads & pastries. Suzanne's energy & talent knew bakers work mostly at night & made a deal for pastries. At home she hired a cook-helper to make salads. Free of Pan am airfreight charges, She imported So. African eggs by the gross & Helman's Mayo by the case from the Firestohe installation up line in Liberia. Each flight had an incoming load message 5 to 7 hours ahead of arrival; she knew the amounts to have ready to put aboard. We had my salary plus foreign allowance that we lived on but her enterprise netted more income than mine. Excess eggs & mayo were given Pan Am personnel & some sold to local merchants---->
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