Riley and I have been over here in South Korea for about about a year and a half. We are used to the food, the tiny apartment (that feels big now), and can understand Korean enough to get around. We have lots of friends from all over the world, and if English is their native language, we feel that we are almost from the same culture.
This week I had an experience that made me realize how much I still don't know about the world. I was discussing cooking breakfast for supper with a fiend of ours from Ghana (West Africa). English is his native language and we watch the same television shows, so we assumed we were talking about the same food. I asked him what he would cook for breakfast and he said it was probably the same as what I cook, eggs, toast, tuna fish salad...
It was then I realized we were not quite on the same page. It turns out Ghanian breakfast is very different from American. Yes, we both can eat pancakes and eggs, but they also eat sweet fried dough, yam and cassava dishes, and spicy porridge (with the occasional tuna salad sandwich). The porridge part was interesting to me, since I picture porridge as oatmeal, but the pictures of their porridge was very different. I found a way to make it using flour and had my friend taste it. It was close enough to give me the idea of what porridge is to a Ghanian, its like pudding more than oatmeal. Its very very smooth and not very thick.
Another interesting part was that Ghana has spring rolls, and my friend didn't know that China has them too. We always assumed they were a Chinese food (we don't have them in Korea), but now we aren't so sure. We are not really sure how they got to Ghana in the first place either. We made some anyway, and they turned out delicious, wherever they are from.
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