Plate Envy

The love for another man’s food is a special kind of greed. You see it in parties when people are in queues and the lady holding the spoon smiles affectionately at a guy holding a plate and piles a lot of jollof rice on his plate smiling. The smile evaporates when the next ‘unknown’ guy holds his plate out. She plays golf with the rice in a back and forth motion, then turns pit digger thrusting the spoon deep into the rice holding the hungry man’s heart in her spoon. She then shakes the spoon and converts the mountain to a plain and puts the tiny portion on the plate. The man asks for more and she gives him that look then dives in the rice while maintaining her eye contact with him in that glance only Nigerian men understand.

You no get wife for house wey go cook for you? Her eyes say

She gives the second spoon and looks at the next man indicating time is up. This is when the poor guy looks at his plate and looks at the plate of the man going in front of him and the envious feelings well up.

It is the same in the Bukas where the definition of one spoon of rice is interpreted by the hands of the one who holds the spoon. This subjective weighing of food is not fair and some guys, the fine boys, the big boys and the charismatic boys might as well say, na dem dey rush us for they get back to back lion shares of all food items.

In Nigerian weddings everyone looks at the plate of his neighbours as he or she walks back to their seat. This breeds envy that gets compounded when the souvenir lady walks around with that who-know-man App in her eyes and serves the gift items according to Aso Ebi status or according to how much she likes your face. Human beings don’t like the fact that some people seem to get more than others in all aspects of life.

One guy a few years ago visited his brother’s house at meal time (what a coincidence) and naturally was invited for lunch. He was later to lament that ‘our wife’ gave her mother who  was also visiting at the time four large pieces of meat and he was given two pieces of meat with some miserable four shrimps that looked like they had been deported from Europe (Not imported o). He actually was counting pieces of meat on someone else’s plate.  His conclusion was that ‘this wife dey chop all my brother money’. I felt like giving him that look: You no get wife for house wey go cook for you? but I was young and feared for my life. A man over forty that is involved in a meat census on someone else’s plate in someone else’s house is capable of murder.

It is a fact of life that some people will be getting bigger than others. While it is understandable that a man who lives in an airless oven might notice the difference when he visits the air conditioned residence of his fellow man, it is reasonable to expect that he should be happy that only one of them has to live in an oven. And when that same man walks past the family dog and sees a fat piece of chicken that he would rather have, it is not the dog’s fault. Plates of food look good on Instagram but that does not mean it tastes better than what anyone has in their homes. True, the salad is always greener on social media and there is an allure for that plate that is beyond reach, however it might be full of salt, cold and badly cooked.

Those in films seem to eat and tell the best jokes and seem happier than real life dinner tables. Well the jokes are scripted and these are actors pretending to love each other. The ice in the drinks are plastic cubes that wouldn’t melt under the hot lights as the directors asks them to repeat the scene on end.

Nothing is sweeter that that food you did not cook. You just turn up, take a seat with the speed of a horse, smell that wonderful aroma and salivate like a pig and then start eating like a horse. At the end you leave without clearing the table or washing the dishes. I guess that is why restaurants were invented. The problem is when someone else’s personal home is treated like a restaurant especially when they are great cooks.

Some visitors time their visits to perfection causing the sages of old to invent that greeting that is usually accompanied with a hypocritical smile, ‘you meet me well my brother, wash hand’.

It is only well for the visitor for the plate owner had planned to eat in peace listening to Celestine Ukwu and reserving that roast fish for the end of the meal. Now the fish has to be offered up as sacrifice on the altar of hospitality. He prays a bone chokes the visitor as he smiles and passes 60% of his fish to him.

When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee:

² And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.

³ Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat.

There is no better plate than the one in front of man. That is the meal to be grateful for. Imagine those who were envious of the affluent families living large in Manhattan in 1903. These rich folk had a cook called Mary Mallon otherwise known as Typhoid Mary. She cooked well but added Typhoid causing germs to each plate for she carried the germs in her body. Many took ill and three died during the course of her career.

Awoof dey run purge (Other people’s delicacies are liable to provoke gastrointestinal maladies).

When it came to big hype about food, none could rival the Titanic. Those with great talents in lusting for food they could never afford had in the description of the Titanic’s culinary arrangements a real life fantasy. First class passengers were practically in heaven and they had the best utensils and wines. Over thirty chefs worked hard to produce the best food on a floating vessel since Noah fed his animals in the Ark.

This floating wonder left Southampton on the tenth of April 1912 amidst fanfare but in the end all the plate envy turned out to be a vanity.

Luther Vandross put it so well when he sang about love and it works well with food: If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you are with.