Togo

Nobody believed that the spaghetti salad recipe on the webpage was really from Togo. My Saint Lucian friend Gus, whose Ancestry test says that his forebears were from Togo, was sure that he would have no DNA memory of it. But when he tasted it, he agreed that his ancestors would have liked it.

This was our fourth time to get together at Raquel’s house to cook. The previous times were for Saint Lucia, Suriname, and Zambia. We started cooking for Togo at 5 pm (with some prep work the day before), ate at 7:30, and, as usual, we ate well, laughed a lot, and stayed until midnight hearing Gus’ great stories. Here are the recipes:

· I took all the ingredients to Raquel’s house the day before and she taught me how to marinate the chicken. Raquel baked it. It was delicious! https://www.internationalcuisine.com/togo-grilled-chicken-recipe/

· Sam made the peanut soup which we served with rice that Ken had made: https://feelgoodfoodie.net/recipe/peanut-soup/

· Gladys made the Togo Spaghetti Salad. Maybe it doesn’t go back thousands of years, but everyone loved it. You might want to cut the amount of spaghetti in half unless you are feeding a dozen people: https://www.internationalcuisine.com/togolese-spaghetti-salad/

· I prepped the Tomato Cornmeal Cake and Aimable did the final cooking because he knows better than any of us how to do it. We all recommend using the cornmeal from the African market over cornmeal that we buy in a regular grocery store: https://www.internationalcuisine.com/togo-djenkoume-tomato-cornmeal-recipe/

· Sam made the Lime Cake. I know it says to bake at 300, but that took so much longer than the recipe said it would. I think the temperature should be 350. I like the texture which is more like chewy brownies than cake: https://www.internationalcuisine.com/west-african-lime-cake-keke/

If you really want to cook the Togolese way, check out the prep work required for this meal! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK9nKDw-EV0

For more Togolese options, skip to the seven minute mark of this video of a family from Ghana visiting a Togolese market and trying the food at all the street vendors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7m-glzUR0k

My library didn’t have An African in Greenland by Togolese author Tété-Michel Kpomassie but it is well reviewed. If I circle back, I’ll pick it up at a bookstore. I did find an interview of the author online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_JFMl3Qltk

Two films on Kanopy caught my attention, Ashakara about the conflict between an African cure and a pharmaceutical company that will lose money unless it is destroyed, and the documentary Abloni about the fast fashion castoffs that pile up in Togo.

There are several daily life videos from Togo. I appreciated that this one was just posted two weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSzBEFjHeDw

Music from Togo is fun, including:

· A documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6NGUEXnK7M

· King Mensah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ5lFHJaNZo

· Toofan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xccQADzqMeo

There are plenty of places to visit in Togo as illustrated in this video tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-sc-B3zm9A and these photos https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-togo/. I want to go! I look forward to a time when broad travel gives us new perspectives. In the meantime, I’m hoping we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace, health, and safety to flourish in Togo and throughout the world.

Photo credit: Guido and Carrara family: https://www.flickr.com/photos/144752224@N06/30223145574/in/album-72157674801071322/