Please, play with your food

We had chicken feet for supper, just last night. An amazing stewy, clawy scrawny footed chicken delicacy around these parts. The feet, swimming in a pool of watery tomatoe and onion gravy was served piping hot with a large dollop of pap.
You don't wait for it to cool. You let your hands do the brave attempt of diving into this hot deliciousness unabated. You scoop the pap, steaming hot, roll it into a ball, blow some air into it while letting it dance between your fingers and your hand. If you don’t play with your food (the pap) - your hand will burn, you will drop the pap, and you will get clobbered over the head by an elder for wasting food. About medium cool, you take your ball and dip it ceremoniously in the pool of gravy and watch as some of the hot juices run down your hand and forearm as the food makes its journey to your mouth. The chicken feet, swollen, succulent having soaked in water and gravy for a good while, are ready for the picking. Again you dive into the pool of gravy, wisps of hot air wafting up and you grab a leg. You grab any exposed part of the limb dodging the heat...nail, finger, hanging skin, you let it dangle in midair, cooling it.

There’s not much meat on chicken feet. You must assault, murder, crush, suck, forage, and chew the life out of that bone. The palm of the chicken’s foot is a popular favourite, it’s by far the meatiest part. Some stuff the lower part of the foot whole in their mouth. Crush, chew and spit out what remains too rough to swallow. Then onto the hemur, there you nibble, suck then crush the life out of it. Supper is served on pastel coloured enamel plates, camping equipment for most, fine china to us. Newspapers serve as our huge placemats, a safe place for the bones and debris. One large dish holds the mountain of hot pap, and a medium plate for the stew. Pap and gravy ought to never inter mingle with each other, except only in your hands. Our food has hierarchy’s and the pap is king.
No restaurant serves this staple, chicken feet stew is a largely home-made broth of deliciousness made with love. Money is as rare as a sirloin steak or succulent kingklip around my township. We eat chicken feet. They are cheap. They are easily accesible. They feed large families. A little goes a long way.

We watched Fear Factor USA the other day. One of the challenges was to eat chicken feet....the girl got cold feet...It was funny. I would've aced that part. We call them 'fear factors' now.

Africans play with their food.