My New Secret Talent: The Ability to Cook a Really Good Pot of Green Slime

During the Kenya Course we stayed for almost 1 week in Kakichuma. A mid-sized village in Bungoma District. There we learned how rural households are responding to the HIV epidemic. Many households that have people living with HIV or AIDS, orphans, or widows are using kitchen gardens and indigenous crops as a way to improve their nutritional status. We met with countless HIV support groups and saw their creative gardening techniques. Some people are growing soy beans and peanuts to improve their protein intake. Others are growing the new Vitamin A enriched sweet potato to improve their immune system. Many gardens are re-introducing indigenous greens such as sun hemp, spider plant, and other crops that I don't remember how to spell.

Christine, the leader of a widows support group in Kakichuma. She had a REALLY nice kitchen garden. 3 acres of well weeded, healthy maize, soya, groundnuts, sweet potatoes, carrots, beans, cabbage, and a indigenous greens.

All this was fun, but the highlight of the week really came when we got a cooking lesson with all these Bukusu (the tribe in the area) grandmas. They taught us how to cook the traditional "greens." I was pretty fun. This is how you do it:

1) Pick off the leaves from the sun hemp, pumpkin, spider plant, or other weed-looking leafy vegetable.

2) Wash the leaves several times in unfiltered dirty well water.

3) Add one cup of ash water (literally water that as been soaking in a pail with ash from a camp fire and then strained).

4) Cook on an out-door coal "stove" of 10-15 minutes. Apparently the ash water reduces the cooking time.

5) Add a small amount of cream and some milk. Only about 2 cups of milk per large basket of leaves.

6) Let the mixture simmer for a few more minutes.

7) Serve hot or cold with Ugali.

Green slime goodness. They taste even better than they look. I think the ash water really helps.


To be honest, I really hesitated about posting this blog entry. Why? The reason is simple. I don't want to have to fend off all the American men who are going to want to date me just because I know how to cook green slime. Really, isn't that just so shallow?

(I have very good source of information that green slime-cooking ability is a very attractive item for men. A Bukusu grandmother who was teaching me how to cook, told me that I would get a husband "very fast" now that I knew how to cook traditional greens).