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Date:
Sat, 14 Mar 1998 15:11:48 -0500
Subject:
From:
Jean-Louis Tu <[log in to unmask]>
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And for those who are interested in cooking practices of the Bushmen in general,
here are a few citations from Tanaka J, The San: Hunter-gatherers of the
Kalahari, A study in ecological anthropology, University of Tokyo Press (1980).

p. 29-30:
"The San's day begin around sunrise (...) Each family cooks and eats
the leftover meat and gathered vegetables from the day before, and
then the men go hunting and the women gathering (...) The men will
also pick and eat plants while out hunting"

"As the sun begins to set, each woman builds a large cooking fire near
her hut and commences cooking."

"Breakfast is sometimes omitted, and even when eaten is a light meal;
during the day too, while out working, the people eat only small
amounts. Even when in camp, they merely snack at odd hours. Only in
the evening does the whole family gather to eat a solid meal, and
indeed people consume the greater part of their daily food then."

p. 38:
"A fair portion of the San's food is eaten raw, but most of it is
cooked. Those foods eaten raw include berries, green vegetables,
plants providing moisture, and some of the root foods. The melons and
roots are more usually eaten cooked."

p.38-39:
"Cooking may consist of pan frying or of baking directly in the
fire. The pans are all iron, acquired relatively recently through
trade. Before the introduction of iron pans, it is thought that the
people probably cooked their food either directly over the fire or in
the middle of the hot ashes. Animal flesh is never eaten raw. When
meat is cooked in a pan, it is simmered for over an hour in a little
water (for which melon pulp is often substituted); when it is so
tender that the sinews will fall apart, it is usually crushed in a
mortar. The San has no salt and used no seasonings; on rare occasions,
however, a little antelope fat will be added to improve the
flavor. When a pan is not available, the San may bury a large piece of
meat in the embers or hot sand and leave it to bake for about an hour
and a half. In addition, thin pieces of meat can be cooked on top of
the fire.

As for the plants, melons are stewed; when a pan is not available, they
are buried in hot embers or ashes as in the case of meat. When the
flesh of fruit is steamed through, the rind is discarded and the rest
ground in a mortar as a gruel. All roots (except Raphionacme burkei)
are cooked over the fire or in the ashes. The Bauhinia petersiana
beans and the berries of Ochna pulchra are also cooked in the ashes,
but as these are about 1 cm in diameter and are hard to separate from
the ashes and sand, a sieve woven of grass is used to separate the
beans or berries.

Honey, which contains a large amount of high-quality sugar, is a
favorite of the San but is a delicacy hardly ever encountered. It is
eaten together with the larvae and the comb."

p. 148
"Fire is widely used, but its main purpose for man is to cook
food. The San now use pans to cook melons and meat, but their
traditional way of cooking is to use direct fire. The use of iron by
the San traces back only three hundred years, when it was introduced
through contacts with Europeans and Bantu. It is still common to roast
meat directly on hot coals or to bury root crops in hot ashes. The
San's skillful use of their most abundant resource -sand- as a cooking
aid should be emphasized: sand heated by fire is used to parch beans
and seeds and to bake meat and melons."


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