FuFu: We Haz that

I was just surfing trying to find the history of domestication of the taro plant, (gabi) which we have growing here, and both the root and the leaves are used for food.

image from Wikipedia commons:

 taro plant in wikipedia mentions this:

 In Ghana, it substitutes plantain in making Fufu when plantains are out of season

Heh. We ate Fufu in Liberia, but it was hard to make from scratch after a day at the hospital, so usually we only ate it when we could buy it at the market. Think of it as mashed roots.

Ah, but now it comes in  instant form.

First, you make your soup. Then you cook the plantain or yam and cassava; and then you pound and pound and pound until the mix is soft enough to swallow without first chewing it.

Now there are brands of instant fufu: you just mix the pre-cooked powder in water, stir it on the cooker for five minutes, or better still, just shove it in the microwave.

 However, the article ends with a man (who of course would leave the cookiing to his wife) complaining that real fufu is better.