Happy Fourth! Learning to "Cook" the Watermelon?!?!?

from Elliott

Even though it is winter here, we were excited when Elliott’s language helper, Wishwell and wife, Albertina said that they had a watermelon and invited us to come over to “cook the watermelon.” Well, we were certainly curious about why we had to cook the watermelon. We remembered that you could make sweet watermelon pickles with the rind but that is not what they had in mind.

We arrived the next day for the cooking lesson and it started with a language lesson – the word in Xhosa for the melon is mxoxozi. After practicing the pronunciation for just a bit and finally getting the two clicks (‘x’) just right Albertina brought the mxoxozi into the kitchen. While the word seemed new to us, the melon looked just like what we had hoped for – watermelon to celebrate US Independence Day!

With a large knife we began cutting up the melon in slices but the first slice was a surprise. Instead of the expected traditional mouth-watering red sweet inside was a light green material fruity in fragrance but not near as sweet. We sliced it and cut it into chunks and then removed the dark seeds. We then put the chunks into a pot of boiling water and once it had become soft we added some maize meal. As we stirred it in, the mixture began to look something like porridge or cream of wheat!

We served it into bowls and enjoyed mxoxozi for breakfast. With a lightly sweet flavour, light green color and a hint of fruitiness we enjoyed a hot bowl of mxoxozi! What a treat!