The lovely Lorna over at Gin & Lemonade With A Twist Blog has started a new writing prompt.

She hasn’t named her challenge, so I have Lorna’s Gin-spiring Prompt!

This week, we have the words: Fall/Autumnal Food Memory.

Okay, so this isn’t going to be a post filled with thoughts of pumpkins… I’m Indian, Punjabi, remember! But not only that, my life has a huge Kenyan influence on it too since my parents were both born and brought up there. Then they married and moved here to the UK.

Stands to reason that my childhood would be littered with a real smorgasbord of international influences!

My autumn food memory is Ugali and Saag.

What the heck is that?

Yup. I hear you.

Well, ugali is my Kenyan influence. It is a type of maize porridge, almost polenta-like, as maize is an easily available grain to most folk out there. It is mixed and cooked, sometimes steamed. My mum would turn it out, and cut wedges of it to put as an accompaniment to the saag.

Saag is the Punjabi element, a spinach dish, highly nutritious and rather like the sukumawiki that is in the picture below. Sukumawiki is the greens based curry that the Kenyans would eat with their ugali.

But I’m Punjabi so we would have saag.

I remember the nights mum would make this dish and it was a full-on eat-with-your-hands experience.

We would take a small piece of the ugali, and roll it into a ball, like you’d do with playdough. (There are times when playing with your food is allowed!) Then we’d depress our thumb into the middle to create an indentation. This was our spoon, or scoop, which we would dip into the saag, and then devour.

Roll, press, dip, eat – Repeat!

It was such a warming dish, great to eat in the cooler evenings… I never learned how to make it and doubt that my kid would even try it, but we loved it.

Some of my other family would have ugali with a chicken curry too, but for me that was sacrilege! It had to be saag!

Thinking about it now is making me really hungry. I wish my mum was closer so I could make a special request!

Google Image of Ugali and Sukumawiki

https://ginlemonade.com/2018/09/09/coffee-fall-vibes/