It has been awhile since we have posted. No, we didn't lose interest in promoting, preserving, and celebrating Africa's food and culture. Most assuredly, work has neither slowed nor stopped.
BETUMI: The African Culinary Network expected to move into an office by early December, with access to new resources such as student interns (especially to help with research and the Africa Cookbook Collection and technical support). That project was repeatedly pushed back due to delays in approval and construction, but we are now at our new site.BETUMI is now part of the community co-working space in downtown State College, Pennsylvania, USA, known as the New Leaf Initiative.
It is an exciting new venture and wonderful place to be, surrounded by energy and enthusiasm, as well as a quiet, efficiently designed place to work.
The other reason for the silence is the intense work on the book manuscript Barbara Baeta and and I are preparing for Hippocrene on Ghana's regional cooking. The book includes a couple hundred Ghanaian recipes from regions throughout Ghana. To date, there are about a hundred that have been drafted and tested, and about 100 in various stages of development. It is time to turn to you for help in testing the final drafts before we hand over the manuscript to the publisher. Many of you have already verbally offered to help: we need everyone's input: home cooks, foodies, Ghanaians, culinary professionals, both those who know and who know nothing about Ghanaian cooking, beginners, experienced cooks. . . If you would like to help, please fill in and send me this form.
For those who want to follow our progress on the testing, we have set up a new Pinterest
board for the testers to post photos of their results at Ghana Regional Cookbook testing Pinterest. Come join us!
