Christmas in Maputo, 1986; a short story

Our house in Maputo, 1986-90

No one had told her Mozambique would be hot at Christmas.  Not this hot.  Sweat ran down between her breasts to pool in her bra.  She opened the oven door to check the turkey they had brought from neighboring Swaziland and a burst of heat scorched her face.  She brushed back her damp bangs and slathered the bird with melted butter.  There must be a place for the stuffing.  It was her mother’s recipe, brought from a land where Christmas meant snow-covered pines and afternoons at the sledding hill.

“Why am I doing this?” she asked herself for the hundredth time.  The gas flame glowed blue beneath the rusted oven floor that served in place of the missing rack.  She maneuvered the stuffing pan into place and slammed the door.

She adjusted the temperature on the missing dial with a pair of pliers and tried to remember how lucky they were to have such a large gas stove when the rebels so frequently knocked out the electricity to the city.  She wasn’t feeling very lucky.

Her husband had volunteered to set the table—in the dining room where the antique air conditioner clanked away.  It didn’t lower the temperature much, but it did take some of the humidity out of the air.  The children were curled up in the same room, reading their Christmas storybooks and playing with new toys.

She wiped sweat from her flushed face and turned on the potatoes.  Soon they added their steam to the sweltering kitchen.  A can of cranberries, a plate of raw veges and a jar of olives, all brought from Swaziland and saved for this moment, completed the meal.

“Time to eat,” she called when the turkey was out and the potatoes mashed.  The rest of the family scurried to help.

“Man, it’s hot in here,” her husband proclaimed as if he had any idea.

When all was on the table, she sank into her chair.  Her husband opened the Bible.  The children grew quiet.  Only the air-conditioner on the wall continued its incessant noise.

“And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus…and Mary brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.”

She took a deep breath of de-humidified, slightly air-conditioned air.  It wasn’t about pines or sledding or even her mother’s stuffing after all.

Welcome to Recipe Saturday!

Welcome back to help us celebrate two years of blogging as International Christian Fiction Writers. I hope you've been enjoying Recipe Saturdays during November. Have you snagged your FREE copy of International Recipes yet? Please do!

This week we're celebrating Africa! Contributors of African recipes to our cookbook include Lisa Harris from Mozambique, Ufuoma Daniella Ojo from Nigeria, and three lovely ladies from South Africa: Shirley Corder, Marion Uekermann, and Ruth Ann Dell. Their yummy recipes include: Snoek Pate, Vetkoek, Curried Cabbage, Bobotie, Cape Lamb Pie, Chicken Curry, Tomato Bredie, Cheese Cake, Melktert, Passionfruit & Coconut Cake, Koeksisters, Crunchies, and Tameletjies (Pine Kernel Brittle).

Wow, do you know what most of those things are? I didn't, but now I do, and many of them look like something I can make in my own Canadian kitchen. Check them out! Today I'd like to feature...(insert trumpet blast here)...

Passionfruit & Coconut Cake

Ingredients

• 1 C grated coconut
• 3⁄4 C sugar
• 3⁄4 C flour
• 4 eggs beaten
• 1⁄2 C soft butter
• Pulp of 6 passion fruits
• 1 t lemon juice
• Icing sugar

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a round cake pan. Mix the coconut, sugar, and flour. Add the eggs, butter, passionfruit pulp, and lemon juice. Mix well, pour into greased pan, and bake for about 40 minutes. Sprinkle with icing sugar when cooled.

This recipe is by Lisa Harris, but all the aforementioned African recipes are also in International Recipes. Download and enjoy!

Valerie Comer's life on a small farm in western Canada provides the seed for stories of contemporary inspirational romance. Like many of her characters, Valerie and her family grow much of their own food and are active in the local foods movement as well as their church. She only hopes her creations enjoy their happily ever afters as much as she does hers, shared with her husband, adult kids, and adorable granddaughter.

Her first work, a novella, can now be pre-ordered in the collection Rainbow's End from Barbour Books, releasing in May 2012. Visit her website and blog to glimpse inside her world.

Is Your Soup Staring at You?

A young Brazilian friend, filling up on
rice and beans at lunch.

There was a chicken head in my soup.   Between the grains of rice and bits of tomato and parsley floating in the yellow broth, his unblinking eye looked up at me. While a chicken staring from the soup was no doubt perfectly normal to the Brazilian family at the next table, it was somewhat disconcerting to me, an American missionary. (My husband across the table pushed aside the clawed foot that reached for the sky from his own bowl.)

What do your characters eat? People in different places enjoy different foods. A hard boiled egg, aged to a mottled purple, brought back delightful childhood memories to my Chinese friend while I made it a point to breathe through my mouth. My friend assured me that what gets called “century eggs” these days weren’t really that old.  “Probably no more than forty.”

Century eggs

Foods are always an important part of culture.  If you are writing about another country, researching local foods is important. Within a country as large as the US, regional differences may give your writing authenticity or make it obvious to the reader that this writer doesn’t really know and thus invalidate your whole story.

For those of you living outside the US, making us smell and taste your foods in your writing (and creating the same emotional response you would have to it), is a good way to draw an American audience into your character’s world.  There is nothing like a Christmas cookout/braai/barbie at the beach to let your readers know they are not in Kansas.

Food preparation plays an important role in women’s socialization in many cultures. I once watched a Mozambican woman glide gracefully across our churchyard with a five-gallon kerosene can of water balanced on her head. Her arms swung easily at her sides, and she never spilled a drop. A little girl of about eight followed with a restaurant-size butter tin of water on her head, held with one hand. Behind the little girl came a toddler, clutching a soup can to her head with both hands. Water sloshed out at every step.

Me, trying my hand stamping grain in tandem
with the ladies at a church conference

Mozambican women spend hours stamping, winnowing and grinding grain to prepare the staple mealie porridge (hard corn meal mush to my Southern US friends). It is a daily activity for traditional Africans. Clusters of women gather in back yards to chat while they work. And if it is a conference, there will be a dozen women or more sharing tasks around several wood fires that give the food that smoky flavor I can’t replicate on the kitchen stove. An urban African woman with a fulltime job outside the home may well grab a bag of dry mealie flour at the supermarket, but she will undoubtedly lament that although it is quick, it doesn’t taste as good. And she will miss the socializing around the huge log mortars that she remembers from her childhood.

Food preparation can provide a background activity while your characters carry on a conversation that reveals character or moves your plot forward.  The preparation itself will give readers insights into the setting. The way a character wields a knife, pounds a chicken breast, or responds to a spilled glass of milk can demonstrate aspects of your characterization. (I once heard a lecture that defined spiritual gifts based on response to spilled milk. The giver says, “Don’t worry; there’s plenty more,” and jumps up to refill the glass. The helper grabs a cloth and mops up the spill. The encourager says, “That’s all right; I know you didn’t mean to spill it.” A teacher like me irritates her kids by saying, “Next time set your glass further back from the edge so you don’t bump it with your elbow.”)

Brazilian "salgadinhos" ready for a party

My teen novel Between Two Worlds includes a scene of food preparation for Brazilian-born Cristina’s longed-for fifteenth birthday party. In that scene I show the different reactions of characters to such a non-American event.  I was also able to bring out differences and similarities (pizza!) to a typical American teen party in a natural way.

So how have you used food in your writing?

If I were to write about your region, what are some foods or food-related activities I should mention to make my story sound authentic?

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LeAnne Hardy has lived in six countries on four continents. Her books for young people come out of her cross-cultural experiences and her passion to use story to convey spiritual truths in a form that will impact lives. You can find out more about her books and travel adventures on her website and blog.