The joy of cooking

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A post shared by Akin Akintayo (@instaforakin) on Apr 12, 2020 at 4:18am PDT

The principles of cooking

I guess one of the things I learnt from my mother is not so much how to cook, but the courage to decide when presented with an assortment of ingredients, I can make a good meal, not just for myself, but to share with others too. I do love cooking.

Besides, it is the joy in cooking food from its components, the selection, the preparation and the making of it. No time is too long for making a delicious meal, with practice, you find innovative ways to convert the process from a chore to an art. I choose from a variety of cuisines, sometimes following a recipe, but mostly not.

Then again, I remember when years ago I decided to remove taste enhancers like Maggi Seasoning Cubes from my cooking and I remember there was a time we were cajoled into using the nasty Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) back in Nigeria, now I rely on spices and herbs to bring out the taste and the flavour.

Confidence through practice

I have found I cannot taste my food whilst cooking it and when cooking for others, they would probably taste it first. I cannot suggest it is sheer confidence and skill that informs this, but I have rarely had to seek an emergency recovery of a cooking expedition awry. Yet, I desire exciting the taste buds enough for others to compliment your cooking

Knowing how to cook means that my tolerance for fast food is incredibly low, I would generally not consider it food, simply basic sustenance. You masticate, swallow and it keeps you going until you are hungry again. It informs my choosing a high-quality restaurant when eating out, where I hope the chef has a promising idea of what they are doing. It does give me some insight into being able to assess, review and critique, presentation, taste and quality. You never get a second chance to give a first good impression.

My Easter meal

For today, I decided on Asaro, I stick to the traditional names rather than find an English equivalent for it. Asaro is from southwestern Nigeria, Yoruba cuisine, made from diced pieces of peeled puna yam tuber, garnished with herbs and spices, cutlets of barracuda and catfish that were steamed for an hour, onions, garlic, chopped tomatoes, chillies, olive oil and palm oil. I have seen many recipes and I seem to prepare mine quite differently without any superfluous elements. I should work on writing out recipes.

It's a big pot and as with our West African foods, ensure the pot gets a good heating at least once a day. So, I will have a couple of days eating this. Like the old nursery rhyme, the porridge tastes better 3 days old. Maybe, it is an unintended ferment or some other natural activity, enough of the science, time to assuage the salivating.

Happy Easter! Everyone.

Back to the cross with meaning to me

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Back to the place I know

In many ways, I am a creature of habit, many of the things I find a sense of comfort in I have written about especially when it comes to food and travel. However, one aspect that appears in my writings much as I would rather it reflected in expression than wear it on my sleeve is my spirituality.

It has a very Christian underpinning influenced by many denominations from which I have drawn strength and support through the good and the bad times where I find endurance, resilience, hope and expectation, knowing that things shall pass, and other things shall come to pass.

In that wealth of experience, I find unusually safe refuge from the turmoil around me, that I can return to my spiritual shelter like a treehouse in the garden away in silence to calm my soul is amazing.

Calm in the memory

Whilst I was chatting to my best friend, I cannot remember what made me search for Danniebelle Hall, a gospel singer and songwriter who passed on in 2000. In my personal prayer time back in 1988, I had a cassette tape of her songs, certain lyrics in her songs ministered life to my fragile soul. When she died, there was a particular song I could not get hold of, I probably last heard it in 1988.

At least, that is what I thought when my search showed up the song on YouTube. After my phone conversation, I played back the music repeatedly amazed I could remember most of the words whilst sorting out the mondegreens. There are periods of spiritual awakening that are recreated in returning to what I know and understand, like the tried and tested that gives me some renewal.

Recalling the times

It reminds me of one night Brian and I were at the Nobel Square in Cape Town, and this young man brought out his guitar and started playing gospel music, the songs of about 20 years ago, many from the Hillsong Music and Michael W. Smith catalogue, literally, all but two I remembered and sang along to.

In my times of meditation and seeking succour, there is a place for music from a certain place, like the minstrel strumming on a harp heralding a peaceful sense of being upon my thoughts, my mind, my soul, chasing worries and anxieties to forgotten places and reaffirming faith that makes miracles of the incomprehensible.

Waxing lyrically with effort

Whilst, I was at it, I decided to get the lyrics to What Can I Do from my hearing of the song, as I could not find any record online. Here goes and if you hear differently, help me with a comment. I always thought there was a refrain, but from the lyrical genius of this lady, nothing is really the same, then add the flourish of her vocal ability, I believe this song should be heard in choirs again.

Lyrics: What can I do?

What can I do?
To be of service Lord, to you,
How can I be pleasing in your sight?
I will give all that I am,
I’ll, I’ll do everything I can,
To show the world I love you,
With all my heart and mind.

Hmm, What can I do?
I just wanna be of service Lord, to you,
How can I be pleasing in your sight?
Here’s what I’m gonna do,
I’ll give you every, everything I am,
I’ll do everything I can,
To show the world I love you,
With all my heart and mind.

Whoa, What I am to some,
May not seem like much,
Oh, but what I am sure becomes,
Something great with just one touch of your hand,
So here, Lord, here I am,
Asking you.

What can I do?
What can I do?
I just wanna be of service Lord, to you,
How can I be pleasing in your sight?
I know what I’ll do,
I’ll give you everything I am,
And I’ll do everything I can,
I’ve gotta show the world I love you,
With all my heart and mind.

Whoa, What I am to some,
May not seem like much, Hey yeah!
But what I am sure becomes,
Something great with, all I need is,
One, one touch of the Master’s hand,
Hey, hey,
So here I am Lord,
I’m asking you.

What can I do?
Tell me what can I do?
Lord, to be of service to you,
How can I be pleasing in your sight?
I made up my mind,
I’m gonna give you every, every, everything I am,
I’ll do everything I can,
I wanna show the world I love ya,
You already know it,
But I gotta let the world, know I love you,
I sure do love you,
With all my heart and mind, I love you,
You saved my soul,
That’s why I love you,
You set me free,
(Lord, I love you)
I sure do love you,
You set me free,
I love you, Jeez,
I love you, I love you,
(Sure do love you)
You’ve been so good to me,
I love you, I love you,
With all of my heart, I sure do love you Jesus,
Yes I do,
(Lord I love you)
Sure do,
Lord you know I love you,
But I’ve gotta let the world know that I love you,
I love you, I love you, Jesus,
(Sure do love you)
(Love you Lord)
Oh! Because you’ve been so good to me,
You set me free,
(Sure do love you)
You open doors that I couldn’t see my way,
(Love you Lord)
And I love Jesus,
Somehow, I gotta tell the world,
That I love you, I love you,
(Lord, I love you)
O yes, I do,
How can I say it?
How can I say it?
I love you,
Oh, I love you Jesus,
(Sure do love you, love you Lord)

[To fade …]

What Can I Do? Written by Danniebelle Hall from the album Unmistakably Danniebelle.

Tackling doubt to stand out

We are not that complete

On my Twitter timeline a few days ago, I saw a message from someone I was following who works in my line of trade and is a respected supporter of our community of technical geeks and tyros.

What he had to say was he had about 12 years of working with a main product that most of us cut our teeth on before it began to diverge and diversify from an on-premise kind of infrastructure to embrace the cloud. I started working on the main product in 1996.

We have both watched the evolution of this product along with cloud integration, the cloud part is now becoming prominent in a co-management co-existence that is it now not enough to have a broader experience without the practised activity in the cloud. What surprised me was his admission that he felt like he was behind left behind by the new developments and so becoming concerned about his future prospects.

Overcoming my doubts

I cannot say I gained any satisfaction from learning that someone I assumed was a consummate Jack of al trades from his mastery of part of the subject felt he was not proficient enough in a developing area. I had recognised my limited exposure in the same area and was working hard at acquiring the skill, understanding, knowledge and insight into the workings and best practices.

If anything, it made me begin to question my doubts in my ability, for as I have been looking for new jobs I have mentally excluded myself from profiles that suggested some knowledge of certain fields when I probably had enough of the requisite understanding and exposure to meet the stated requirements and with the wealth of experience should be able to grow into the role to demonstrate proficiency and acumen to excel in it.

Taking on new bouts

I find that as I rate my competence, I am lacking in confidence to venture out and apply for some roles, thereby limiting my choices towards the opportunities that come my way. I feel like I need some sort of reassurance and advice, maybe even a pep talk, I am not sure. What is clear to me is I probably just have to put myself forward, deal with the rejection if that is the result or rise to challenge if they want to take it further.

I am digging for that resilience from within me to face what is ahead. Even in my doubts, I must fight some bouts.

Thought Picnic: The scattered bricks of my story

Making the bricks for story building

The things I remember that I want to forget and the things I have forgotten that I would like to remember become a swirling storm in the mind, mindful of the need to ensure that the truth expressed in the custom of the use of language does not suffer excessive embellishment as to read like fiction.

Then I realise, there are events that are too incredible to believe, those as real as I feel more like a film playing back in my mind with vivid imagery; the setting reanimates with the sensations of contemporaneous smell and feeling, hairs standing on end a frightened me betwixt two realities separated by time.

These are the issues that seem to affect my ability to pen the stories I have wanted to tell, many snippets of which slip through blogs or other conversations that I wish I had written as the thoughts coalesced into formats that could be shared.

The ages of Akin

I have not committed myself to formal writing courses, but I am learning more about how to tell stories even if I have not done much to the narrative for almost 5 months and beyond the age of 6.

It then occurred to me that I could begin to write at different ages, from observations with reflection, in gathering the observations of others from times when I had no recognition or awareness and from the perspective of studied development, the process of learning of and knowing myself.

More pertinently, it does not have to be a complex process, I have to find an easier flow to my prose without labouring the necessity to impress. I guess I just want to tell a story that is readable, maybe interesting and perchance funny. I have my work cut out; I hope it can eventually be effortlessly done. Maybe, I need to break away to do this thing.

Coronavirus streets in Manchester - III

Social animals are we

Much as progress, civilisation, technology, human ingenuity, and resourcefulness has brought amazingly miraculous feats to our modern-day life, this period of quarantine and self-isolation has highlighted some fundamental needs.

Chief amongst them is human interaction, my beau and I have co-opted Zoom as our video conferencing tool over WhatsApp, as Skype was not reliable enough, except for voice calls when other means of communication are unavailable. How much we would have preferred to be together instead.

I had not left my apartment since Saturday and at other times when I have gone shopping, it was a solitary event. Only once before had one of the store attendants ventured a decent conversation and it was mainly about the lockdown. My friends do attempt to keep my spirits up, calling on the phone and having long conversations, but that is no substitute.

They were really there

This afternoon, I heard voices in the corridor outside my door, we have 5 apartments in my wind and the length of the corridor is probably 20 metres or more. I looked out and saw my neighbour opposite who had passed a note under my door a few weeks ago offering assistance and help with my shopping, her daughter and my next-door neighbour.

We were all properly spaced apart and after exchanging pleasantries, we talked for about 15 minutes. You can imagine how useful the interaction was, it gave me the feeling that I wasn’t losing my marbles, and that for all my tendency to looking myself away from the public, I still need this social expression, if just for the sake of sanity. We are social animals.

Grant them eternal repose

Later, I went to my local store, in fact, I visited 3 stores, and all had run out of flour. Is everyone baking a cake? Suffice it to say, all hotels are closed, only restaurants offering takeaways are open and suppose they only use couriers. The city is almost a ghost town and it is unlikely the lockdown would be lifted on Easter Monday.

Meanwhile, as our Prime Minister sits up in high spirits being tended to by an Italian consultant in an Intensive Care Unit we are given the inclination he does not really need, another 938 people gave up the ghost in the last 24 hours and I cannot help but wonder how many of those souls needlessly died before their time. If …

My thoughts are with the many whose lives have been touched with the sorrow at the departure of a loved one. God rest the souls of the beloved and strengthen the hearts of their survivors.

Dreamscape: In the shut-eye world

Sleepy follows

I sit quietly observing nothing, in particular, just caught up in my thoughts as the threat of slumber looms. The quarantine period is sending my body clock into a soporific daze, I have to convince myself I am not narcoleptic.

Then, the sleep did catch me away, I was on my settee just as my period of meditation slipped into the unaware, a dreamy world taking to places I had been before. Everything looked safe on the path I chose before a man looking menacingly at me decided to lunge at me with a knife in his hand. I felt myself draw in a deep breath and kick at his weaponised hand.

Acting out a thing

The crashing at the impact of my kick was my centre table kicked about a metre away, things on the tabletop and on the shelves below, strewn on the floor. I guess that was my first observation of movement from within my sleep demonstrated in the physical.

From within vivid dreams, I do at times speak out loud, I have apparently kicked my partner out of bed completely unaware of my sudden skill at Thai boxing. I wonder if I should be bothered or see it as par for the course.

As for my reflexes, a flea, a fly or a mosquito hovers within sight, I wave my hand closing it as a fist over the insect and I want to believe it has been caught and killed, it isn’t in my hand or caught between my fingers and it has disappeared somehow. If I thought I was a magician or an illusionist, I haven’t convinced myself enough to offer it as a party trick.

My thoughts are with fellow child sexual abuse survivors

Entertaining a doubt

My heart cries out for those like me who lost our sexual innocence long before we knew what sex or innocence was. To some, it was someone trusted and known who found the opportunity and the importunity to impose themselves on us and left us without the courage to squeak about the how, the why and for what we were violated.

Early this morning in Australia, Cardinal George Pell had his conviction for child sexual abuse quashed and he walked away a free man. He needed to go to the highest court in the land having been found guilty through the justice system that the Australian High Court was his last chance. [The Independent]

In the end, the judges unanimously decided the jury “acting rationally on the whole of the evidence, ought to have entertained a doubt.” That’s it; on the preponderance of the evidence before a jury of his peers, they were convinced that he was guilty, but on the consideration of law before the judges, they should have entertained a doubt.

Full justice is not ready for us

It made me wonder whether this supposed to be a doubt as to the veracity of the stories of the sexually abused, or the structure of reverence for authority that leads one to consider people in a particular office or of a certain stature cannot be thought to have committed such crimes. Either way, the jury believed the abused and were not cowed by the office.

Yet, what would it take for historic clerical child sexual abuse to run the course of a judicial system and deliver justice for the victims? How can our stories from childhood be believable today, if now we find the courage to speak up about the harm that was done to us as kids?

There are stories I have not shared with anyone of times when others found their sexual pleasures in me, the first from the age of 7. I reflect on it and appreciate that I am one of the survivors, with all the scars that came with the loss of innocence, the poor sexual choices that ensued and the inability to foster rewarding and lasting relationships of trust and commitment until recently.

Blog - My Sex Post

They don’t listen

There are only a few of us who have found an accommodation; not so much for what happened to us, but finding a new source of strength, hope and self-esteem that took us to another place where we could thrive and find some newness in purpose and relationships towards a fulfilling life.

Having seen attitudes and reactions to reports of child sexual abuse from the victims, I am sadly of the view that they will always have an uphill task convincing many of the facts of what happened to them.

Heck! I had a terrifying event that happened to me, everyone heard me scream in terror, our houseboy, my aunt, my parents, my mother’s best friend with her husband who were guests visiting and when I told them what I saw, it was dismissed out of hand by my father.

Blog - The damage done when parents fail to listen

Boldly tell your story, anyways

What chance telling anyone long after the event, maybe decades on about how the people they entrusted our care to liberally took sexual favours? We all know what happened to us and by God, we can differentiate between reality and the figments of our imagination.

Was it the grooming, the entrapment, the threats, the smell, the location, the acts, the pain or hurt, the terror, and how our temperaments and composure changed with no one, especially our guardians or teachers noticing?

Blog - A survivor does not owe you a convincing story

I concluded, whether I am believed or not, I will tell my story, it is mine to tell, in my own words, at my own convenience, in my own time. It is not to convince anyone, but to have it on record. Whether justice would be found after the revelation, one cannot tell because someone who matters in the quest for justice might entertain a doubt and with that dismiss my lived history.

It may be out of shame or embarrassment, the need to let bygones be bygones, the long passage of time, the statute of limitations, the desire to just carry on with one’s life or some other inexplicable factor, perpetrators of child sexual abuse will escape justice and accountability. What they cannot escape, no matter how much they plead their innocence is what they did to us.