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Reply to "Serious Question"

yuji22 posted:

Does anyone know the origin of Cook up or All in One as it is called in Berbice ? 

Yuji, if you look at the method used as teenagers for us to bush-cook, cook-up or all-in-one, it might give some clue how it might have started.

I believe just like making 'do-say' roti, with few ingredients like flour, sugar and water  to make a breakfast meal, cook-up might have started due to poverty, where everyone is asked to bring an ingredient for the pot.

I can now understand when homeless 'beggars'  ask for help from house to house and  are given some uncooked rice or a potato.  This can be used to prepare a simple meal, with veggys they can find in most kitchen gardens.

Often the meat for cook-up is a chicken, we usually 'borrow' from the neighbour's chicken coop. But we always invite a boy from that family to enjoy the meal and bunjal chicken chesa, so if we are even discovered, he will be just as guilty as we are and declared innocent of the fact.[Simple teenage logic] 

That method worked well, until after we kill the chicken and cannot find a boy from that family to enjoy the meal. Den our kok  duk to explain the chicken in our cook-up.   Hiding the feathers don't seem to help much.

My father prepared and enjoyed 'dry-food', maybe originated by Africans, but I don't know how it started ?     It was large pieces of vegetables and meat, with no gravy.    

Tola
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