It is programming all of it to colonization.
I keep seeing posts saying to leave afrika alone and yet folx on the continent are clamouring for all tings yt.
It is sad to watch Afrikans think they maneuver the treachery of ytness by absorbing it.
Have we learned no lessons from the slave trades on our behalf, from a world built of Anti Blackness?
Have we forgotten American Afrikan Civil Rights or even South Afrikan Aparteid?
Have we learned nothing?
All tings that American Afrikans do should be yours too, right?
Ya’ll tell us we have no culture and then clamour for all we have in the same breath.
Which one is it?
Except that dream of what we have is a lie,
it is a performance while our communities are under direct destruction, being decimated just like Afrikan communities.
It’s the reason why you see Afrika in a rush to do everything like the west instead of paving their own way.
It is the reason why we see deep destruction continuing everywhere because the liberation that some of us are fighting for isn’t aligned with freedom for us all.
A lot of Afrikan folx just wanna setup lil america on the continent.
We crave the exact things that are meant to destroy us.
It is no coincidence that the first and only country I traveled to in my youth was Japan.
That exchange wasn’t about learning so much but instead ingratiating me to cultures that are the leaders of empire.
It was an insurance for all the asian grocery stores and Black hair stores where I was being brutalized and scrutinized.
It was insurance for that 3 wings, fried rice, and mambo sauce.
why do we understand so little of Afrikan indigenous foods?
why are most of the names I know in food industry from cook books to restaurant chains, to cooking school all rooted in ytness.
why can I find jasmine rice and other asian variations of rice at my local international store but no other varieties that represent the global south, let alone Afrika?
why have we lost every single aspect of our hair history and replaced them with lace fronts and baby hair looking like colonial fools under a hot Afrikan sun.
A sun that knows us well and yet we hide from it, we bleach our skin and have the audacity to believe we look anything other than a naked aliens, them strange foreigners that landed on our shores, the ones who made us laugh at their ignorance, we are now them.
Killing voraciously anything that doesn’t alone with massa colonizer explorer.
Our hair has cosmically disappeared by trying to program yourself to American Afrikan hair practices. Washing away ancient ancestral knowledge and replacing it with clean girl aesthetic, empty pockets and empty head too.
Everything on turtle island is about dissolving every piece of your indigeneity until nothing it’s left but a clean yt hole.
Vacant.
Easily occupied by those in power who have everything to gain from your disembodiment and your performing to the culture instead of being it.
Why, why you say?
Because some of us no matter how we may look, we have been washed as yt snow, we stick to the top of the mouth, no nourishment like their white bread and white rice that we so deeply crave.
we believe in eating these things we have claimed our purity too.
The job has been done and the jig been had, they’ve made hollow yt men from deep Black earth indigenous soul.
Fertile ground
now
barren.
My goal as I have the time is to get back to cooking the things that I can from scratch instead of us purchasing them from process from the store.
Bread is the first item I can mark off that list.
tell me about bread, ancestors, spirit & you?
i’ve been baking for most of my life
this time of year was typically filled with my mothers parker house rolls
cookies and cakes
assorted bread with jellied fruits that only showed up once a year
and I was expected to know how to make all
of them or order to ease my mothers role as homemaker and also to groom me for my future man (hard eye roll)
2 years ago when I began the journey of pumping the brakes all the way
my ride slow hom(e)ie era
leaning into unmasking and a slow peeling back of all the layers that had turned me into a callous of a human
everyone wearing their stolen bits of me with pride
bread taught me how to just be
it taught me that even when things appear lifeless they are bubbling up with alchemy just under the surface
a journey of turning the inside out
no longer that perfect crust but the gooey bits exposed
baobab gilead is the name of my first sourdough starter
there is a balm in gilead
where the baobab tree covers me
my ancestors beneath me
crust
spirit above me
crust
soft goooey me
bet(in)ween
bread
earth
chedda
nourishment
life
what is bread?
bread is nourishment, sustenance
I grew up eating cheese toast
a slice of cheddar on roman meal
carb lover I be
yes I will eat your pizza bones
pass them too
I learned how to eat it like the bourgeois
lil crusty bread
lil pâté
lil funky ass cheese
in the south it’s nigga charcoochie
in alabama its sous meat and saltine crackers
or viennas too
hogs head will also do
crackers not crackas
them is two different tings
one a salty delight
the other a bitter blight
wonder bread dead
stuck top of my mouth
I think about
3 fish
5 loaves
I think about manna from heaven
communion crackers
the only nourishment to sustain you till granny and nem stopped hollering hallelujahs
peanut butter crackers
cornbread and fried pies
fritters and hush puppies
ginger and banana bread
puff puff
injera
kisri
(sings)
a beef patty and some coco bread
festival
roti
bread truly is the glu(e)ten of life
it is foundational
core
key
the stuff that sticks to ya bones kneading ancestral you
through lineages for another day
in order to make bread you need earth, water, mineral, fire, air and fungi, if any one of these elements is out of balance you may end up with something other than bread.
it is a delicate balance.
bread is a cosmos of its own, an alchemical mix of quantity and ingredients that comes together seemingly making something from nothing.
it’s can grow and change or not based on environment
it’s final form is contingent on so many different tings including the intention and care on its journey to becoming bread.
bread is us and we is bread
how do we reclaim a life giving ting that is now making us dead?
the recipe
3 cups (450g) all purpose non bleached flour 2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (follow direction on container to prep)2 tsp sea salt 1 1/2 cups (375 ml) very warm tap water , NOT boiling or super hot
Mix Dough: Mix flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Add water, then use the handle of a wooden spoon or spatula to mix until all the flour is incorporated.
Dough will be rough and not kneadable
Rise: Cover with cling wrap or plate, leave on counter for 2 – 3 hours until it doubles in volume, it’s wobbly like jelly and the top is bubbly If after 1 hour it doesn’t seem to be rising, move it somewhere warmer.
Optional – refrigerate for flavour development - At this stage, you can either bake immediately or refrigerate for up to 3 days.
Let dough warm to room temp – if you refrigerated dough per above, leave the bowl on the counter for 45 – 60 minutes while the oven is preheating. Cold dough does not rise as well.
Preheat oven Put dutch oven in oven with lid on (26cm/10" or larger). Preheat to 230°C/450°F (5-30 minutes prior to baking.
Shape dough: Sprinkle work surface with 1 tbsp flour, scrape dough out of bowl. Sprinkle top with 1/2 tbsp flour.
Using wet fingers fold the sides inwards (about 6 folds) to roughly form a roundish shape. it will be a lil sticky and that is okay. the goal is to deflate and shape.
Transfer to paper: If you have parchment paper great, i didn’t. lightly oil and flour your dutch oven.
Parchment Paper: Slide a large piece of parchment/baking paper (not wax paper) next to the dough, then flip the dough upside down onto the paper (ie seam side down, smooth side up). Slide/push it
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