BetumiBlog

The Akan adinkra symbol on the left is called "bese saka," or "bag of kola nuts." Like a lucrative sack of such n...

This past semester two of my students selected "grains of paradise" as a West African ingredient to research. One of the first t...

All semester (August through December) I've been blessed by the generosity of others, especially African/Africanist friends and collea...

It's been some time since I've commented on the latest (cook)books I'm reading/collecting, and also since I've thanked con...

Was delighted to open my mailbox today to find the November/December issue of plate magazine there. Each issue of this award-winning ...

Our food culture in sub-Saharan Africa class is in the home stretch. We've completed units on western, eastern, and southern African c...

 I received a pleasant note today that Betumiblog has been selected by a business school as among the "Top 100 Sites for Internation...

Food studies and literature courses rarely consider African food the same way they do other cuisines, apart from the frequent allusions to...

Last Friday we finished the Western Africa unit of our class at Penn State, and in a grand finale moved to one of PSU's food labs in t...

There are numerous farmer's markets in central Pennsylvania this time of year. Last week 2 of my students (one from Ghana) told me one...

Yesterday I added a welcome volume to the Africa Cookbook Collection : a book by Nelson Mandela's personal chef. I first heard a...

Ahhhh. The end of summer. Time for a cool drink in a shady spot before classes begin on Monday. In this photo I've paired it with som...

Last week I spent several days in Hershey, PA, at The Hershey Company . We had fun cooking and immersing ourselves in West African culture,...