If it were up to me, this Mashujaa Day, a long-overdue national honour would be bestowed upon the person or people who saved Kenyans from the trauma of tinned cooking fats.
Whoever was behind the move from tins to plastic tubs deserves at least a Moran of the Burning Spear (MBS), as do their counterparts who came up with blended spice packets, pre-shredded and cooking-ready washed vegetables.
By honouring these people in this way, I am openly admitting that when it comes to cooking, speed is key for me.
Let’s start with the spice blends. These come in handy little packets with easy-to-follow instructions, saving cooks like me from having to buy and measure out each spice for a dish such as prawn curry, chicken tikka or whatever. Trust me, meals cooked in this fashion taste every bit as good as those made the slow, painstaking way.
The person who invented the rice cooker will always have a special place in my heart, and I am currently researching whether it is worth buying one of those ugali makers. Traditionalists might frown, but frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn. When cooking, convenience is my goal.
The same goes for grocery shopping. I will never understand why supermarkets and their suppliers are against making food shopping and prep more convenient for their customers.
I want to buy potatoes that have already been washed. I know that leaving soil on certain produce can be a sign of its fresh-from-the-earth origins, but honestly, I do not need this proof. I believe you, and as a proud jarabuon, I’ll still buy the potatoes, and so on.
While one or two suppliers have figured this out, offering their potatoes and other vegetables neatly packaged for people like me to pop into our shopping baskets and be done with it, the majority of supermarket suppliers couldn’t seem to care less.
It’s usually the so-called “loose potatoes”, for example, that are left unwashed, as if to imply that anyone buying just a couple of viazi doesn’t deserve clean hands. Whatever happened to the idea of adding value to produce?
Perhaps I spent too long living in South Africa and got used to the soft life, but what would be the crime in letting your customers enjoy a bit of the same? It’s all very well having Customer Service Week announcements in your shops, but why not actually go the extra mile for those very customers?
I’ll always choose pre-shredded sukuma wiki or cabbage, because it saves me time when I get home and want to make dinner.
Many years ago, when I often bought my sukuma wiki from the kiosks near where I lived, the women who ran the vegetable stall understood the assignment, as people say.
They would spend time, or hire someone, to shred sukuma wiki with a small knife or razor blade, and the bachelors and other time-savers would always be grateful.
Meanwhile, I’m old enough to remember when cooking fat came in tins that were a vicious nightmare to open unless you were lucky enough to own a tin opener. For whatever reason, most likely family finances, while I was growing up, few homes in Kenya had can openers.
A manual crank opener that also doubled as a bottle opener might have been familiar in middle to upper-deck urban homes, but they were few and far between elsewhere. Instead, most people used a sharp knife to do the job.
This was a perilous operation. One had to press the knife’s tip carefully into the lid at an angle to create a hole, then repeat the process around the rim until a jagged perforated line formed. From there, the brave chef would attempt to prise the lid open with the blade, often shredding their fingers in the process.
For years, this was the norm until, in the late 1980s or early 1990s, some bright spark at one of the cooking fat manufacturers decided to sell the product in easily accessible plastic tubs.
Clearly, someone had witnessed the carnage of the cans and thought, “Enough is enough.” I hope they received one heck of a bonus. We need more of their kind, and quickly.
