THINGS...

86. The number of days left till Christmas. That period we all get excuses to overdo: overeating, overspending, oversharing (Social Media eeeh!), overdressing and my favourite part, there is all the New Year New Me just around the corner. ‘New Year New Me’, I aspire to be that guy who brews for a living. We’ll make 750 ml of a kaStrong one we will call, New Year New Me. We will run ad-campaigns on the Twitters and IGs of this world (who still uses FB anyway?) and we will uses these individuals with smartphones and Wi-Fi, commonly referred to as ‘Influencers’, to push our brand with the hashtag #NYNM.
The video we shoot for the campaign will be voiced by a heavily accented baritone, because what could be more suave than a heavily accented baritone right? The baritone will say several things in a creepy low voice, the one the Sapiens of these modern era refer to as ‘bedroom voice’. Now, you may ask, why on earth would I buy a beverage whose advert features a bedroom voiced baritone with an airport accent? I will tell you this, you will buy it because the bedroom voice will get into your head and just when you are in that dreary meeting, it will reach into the crevices of your medulla and touch you lightly, the baritone vibrating steadily, the accent icy like the distant lands it purports to originate from, the message, oh the message, I will have to start a new paragraph just for the message.
The message, through the light, steady, icy voice will remind you of the possibility of renewal. One of those Alice-In-Wonderland experiences. Renewal, the echoes of that word bouncing off of the marble floors and glass walls of your thinking port, you seek a way out. New Me; it will pound on and on in your head after class, when you go sit with Lucy and Kevo smoking substances that burn lungs. New Me; you sit through class hearing this whisper, its blistering iciness numbing out everything else. Then you hear the gulping in the Baritone’s throat. He is swallowing, gulp, from mouth to throat, somewhere in the middle it settled for just under 1.98 seconds before moving down to scale the remaining length before depositing itself like a long, flowing scarlet robe, made from the finest silk, in the gut. It sends its warmth from this central base, the body’s kitchen, to the rest of your physical being. The tips of your toes will feel this warmth at the same time as the roots of the hair on your head, weave or no weave.
‘Wait, HE was swallowing, the BARITONE, how am I feeling the warmth?’ You will ask.
‘But you are the BARITONE,’ the reply will come from a vaguely familiar distance within your capacities. A distance stretching vast acres of ice and a steady vibration building itself to a hum. A hum like that of an old steam locomotive, the ones that had 1st, 2nd and 3rd class.
‘How can I be the baritone? I am losing it aren’t I? I need to get out of here,’ you will think.
Class, meeting, you leave, eyes wild with purpose. Teeth clenched. Hands in a fist, there’s only one way this will end.
Gulp. The iciness, gone. The warmth in the pit of your stomach spreads to the lobes of your ears and kisses the tips of your fingers as the blood rushes steadily through your veins carrying with it the warmth of renewal to the Holder of the Body’s Time, the hallowed quarters, Auricles and Ventricles; The Heart.
#NYNM
Saturday, 12:08 AM, 85 days to Christmas. Somewhere in the background, Usher is screaming at the top of his lungs about climaxing.

Anyone up for some food warmth maybe?

Today’s recipe is one I have ALWAYS wanted to try here and would you look at that, #NYNM. MANDIZI-MANDAZI WITH NUTMEG. I know, the two can be a twister, mandazi and mandizi. How did this work? Well…

Ingredients
300 grams flour
3 bananas
3 eggs
2 teaspoons Nutmeg powder
100 grams white sugar
100 grams margarine
2 teaspoons baking powder
Luke warm water for kneading.

Method
Measure out all your ingredients. In a bowl, mix the flour and baking powder. Rub in the margarine with your hands until the margarine disappears into the flour. Add your sugar and mix well. In a separate bowl, mash the bananas to a pulp. Make sure the banana pulp is consistent. Add the nutmeg powder and mix well then add in the eggs one by one and whisk them with the banana pulp.
Pour the banana and egg mixture into the flour mixture and fold in using your hands. Pour this mixture in bits. If the flour gets too runny, add more flour being sure to fold in well, once all the mixture is in the flour, fold in using your hands until it gets consistent before setting it onto a worktop. Similar to how you make chapati. Knead this dough well on the worktop, using the Luke warm water to soften when the dough gets too hard. Once well kneaded, cover for 20 minutes before kneading once more. After this final kneading, divide the dough into pieces for ease during rolling out. Roll out using a roll-pin and cut into whatever shapes you desire. I went with circular shapes. Once all is done, fry them in a pan until each side browns.
Let them cool before dusting off using Powdered Sugar (Icing Sugar). Enjoy

Thank you for reading through. Kindly take a look at my previous posts.
Share widely,
Asante Sana and Kwaheri.