Plantains… Fried!
We finished reading a chapter in our history book about Ancient Africa last week. Because Ancient Africans left few writings and artifacts, what we know of the time period is based mostly on oral history passed down. A favorite character in many stories is Anansi the Spider. We read a couple of stories, but the one that stood out is Anansi and the Make-Believe Food.
Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
Anansi’s village has no food, so Anansi decides to leave in hopes of finding food for the village. He walks a very long way until he sees a pillar of smoke. When he finally arrives in the far-off village, the cassava are there asking him how he would like to eat them (roasted, boiled or fried). He tells them he’ll eat them however he wants them to, so they all yell, “Roasted!” and jump into the fire. Before he can eat them, he sees another pillar of smoke from another far-off village. The cassavas tell him that it’s the village of the plantains. Anansi decides that he likes plantains better and heads off before eating the cassava. The plantains in the plantain village are all the eager for Anansi to make a meal of them and decide to be, “Fried!” but, yes, he spots another pillar of smoke from a fire and is soon leaving for the village of rice without eating a plantain. When he gets to the rice village, they yell, “Boiled!” but Anansi leaves for yet another pillar of smoke from a far-off village. When he gets there, he is dead with exhaustion and finds that he has returned to his own village. They boil up a stew of fish bones for him since that’s all they have. No one ever finds the three villages again and the moral of the story is “Don’t be greedy, eat what you’re given.”
My moral would be to eat a bit from each village before going to the next one, but I can see how no one would really learn anything from that. Also, could there be anything more gross to eat than fish bone soup? I think they called it right when they chose something so universally disgusting to compare with the other three foods.
While reading the story, the kids laughed about the food coming to life and asking to be eaten, choosing how they would be prepared, and then preparing themselves to be eaten. When I pulled out the plantains I bought from the grocery store to surprise them, Seth said, “Wait. Plantains are real?” We all laughed and Zack yelled, “Fried!” We tasted them before frying them and they all agreed that they were kind of like a hard banana. After frying them, they decided they tasted more like potatoes. That explains why Seth didn’t eat more than one. He can’t stand potatoes.
Sarah decided that if you could fry a plantain, then why not a banana? I thought they might turn to soup, so it was a good experiment to see how they held together pretty well. I’ve had cooked bananas before, but they are usually in some kind of batter and turn hot liquid-like on the inside. The bananas cooked faster and got a little burned, but Sarah liked them better than the plantains. I really like plantains, so I got to eat a fair amount today.
Everyone was feeling pretty good after this object lesson, so I decided to give them their tests on this chapter. They cheerfully took them with their plates of plantains beside them and I thought, ‘This doesn’t happen in public school.’
Posted on February 22nd, 2010 by trish
Filed under: Haley Kids, Homeschool