They had their own sense of good tasting food too!

Whenever I enter into supermarkets these days to buy condiments, I am easily overwhelmed. I just have too many options to chose from -different things and also varieties of the same stuff differing maybe in colour, smell, hotness or what have you. Once, I had gone to the section of the supermarket where condiments were measured out and sold in weights. I had asked for forty grams of curry. The lady pointed to two different barrels containing things that both looked alike. Actually both of them were curry powder but one actually tasted hotter than the other, the lady later explained to me. I smirked because to me, curry powder was curry powder so I randomly made a choice.

Today, I made one of such trips to the supermarket to buy condiments for my meal tonight. While I cooked the meal, I remembered something that happened many years ago.

Many years ago, as a child I had eaten a delicious meal one evening. Perhaps, there was no power supply that night so I had lots of thoughts running through my head. One of those thoughts persisted. I was wondering about the miserable foods my great grand parents ate because there were obvioulsy no condiments like we have them now then.

I had asked myself, "how did they eat food that had no seasoning cubes added to them?" I pitied my great grand parents and the time they were born in.

This thought persisted until one day I had to ask my parents. My parents were amused and told me that  seasoning cubes actually became popular while they were growing up. They said even my grand parents had very rich natural foods as they had a lot of crustaceans, fishes, sea animals and the rest of such things in their food since they lived in the Delta area of Nigeria. My parents confirmed that their foods were tasty too as they hunted and used bush meat to prepare their meals.

I then began to envy my grand parents. I wished I could taste the kind of food my great grand parents ate, but how can I? The seas and the rivers in the Delta area of Nigeria have been contaminated by crude oil spills over the years. The things my great grand parents found accessible and affordable at that time are now scarce and expensive. So, my great grand parents actually needed no seasoning cubes in their food not to think of different tasting curry powders. Yet, they ate good tasting food.

No matter what any history book may have to tell me about the kind of "darkness" my forebears were in before they brought civilization to them, there is something they cannot tell me. They cannot tell me that they taught my forebears how to cook good tasting food. My forebears in addition to other things had their own sense of good tasting food too!