Ever heard of the old newspaper myth? It's a funny street food ritual.
Maybe this is something in other parts of the world, but it's a deal in West African countries especially Nigeria. It's silly but I think it's surreal as most myths eventually remain real. I'll be explaining further later on in this blog.
Although, I had lost my flare for daily blogging for some months now, It's sad as I struggle to compose what to publish, something that I have done for over three years nonstop since the days of Steemit, before Hive was birthed.
And I don't believe this is a writer's block, I think I'm slowly detaching myself from anything incentivising platforms, they always have deep and low key ass licking, no matter how much you pretend it doesn't exist lol.
Perhaps it's also because I don't earn much anymore, definitely no one will keep wasting their time doing something less rewarding and less productive. You may disagree with this statement if you earn often publishing, it's your choice lol.
Be that as it may, I found out that I haven't written about the "Old newspaper myth", a West African food ritual before as I search through my published articles.
As you can see below, I have grilled chicken and some vegetables with wine as I munch on and watch Tokyo 2020 Olympics games which is currently going on all thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic last year.
The first image is without Flash, the second one was taken with a flash to show clearly what I was talking about. It looks funny right?
Old newspaper myth is about food and how they taste differently when served with old newspapers. To some extent, it is absolutely true. Or maybe just a mindset.
Trust me, grilled,smoked, barbecued or fried foods taste differently when wrapped/served in old newspapers. Hence most grilled food vendors sticked you to this, you might not believe it but it attracts more customers like it did to me lol.
Took me thirty-five minutes to and fro from the grilled spot to get the chicken. Imagine going through that stress just to satisfy your cravings...
Not only do you enjoy foods served in old newspapers, from my little research, the old newspapers absorbs excess oils from the food being served hence the reason why most vendors use it to wrap street foods.
Yes, it's majorly street food that abide to this unorthodox food rituals. However, some continental cafes and restaurants in the city I reside now abide to this rule by serving some orders on old newspapers as per customer requests.
Some of the street foods that are usually served in this way are grilled chicken, spicy barbequed steak(Suya), Bean cake(Akara), something Grilled catfish etc. Truth is, grilled fishes are mostly served in some special tinfoils, so fishes don't generally obey this food ritual of my region.
Now that you know what the old myth is all about, it's not something diabolical, it's just a something old that's not going away anytime soon as far as street foods still exists in this dimension.
Although, you could argue the hygiene behind using old newspapers to serve food. Strangely, in my thirty-fiveish years on this streets, I haven't heard or seen any one get food poisoned or sick with this street food ritual. Except maybe the actual food is not well cooked or contaminated.
Personally, I have never been sick or got food poisoning from these. And I know dozens of people like me who never got sick, maybe foreigners might have gotten sick from it anyways.
So to enjoy my grilled much with the old newspaper serving, I had a chilled unopened Red wine waiting for me in the fridge when I got back. As you can see from the few shots, I was devouring it with some veggies(Cabbage, Lettuce and Cucumbers), all chopped.
The wine was slowly hitting home as it accompany the chewed spicy grilled chicken down my throats, relaxed and watching some of the daily Tokyo 2020 Olympics that I have missed.
Regarding the Olympics, my cojntryy us out already with just 2 to 3 medals(Silver and Bronze), dissapointing but not so sad. My country never invested much in grassroots sports so we all didn't expect any miracles to happen.
With that in mind, I'm always jeering for the Great Britain Team, Team USA, the Russian Olympic Committee and the French Olympic team.
I often wish I could just be at the Olympics too someday, but that's not gonna happen at my age lol. Except maybe something big changes.
To wrap it up, the food ritual is a West African thing, not sure if street foods are served in old newspapers in some other parts of the world. In all honesty, I think the newspaper myth makes these foods more delicious regardless of how silly it sounds, plus it goes well with cold beer or Wine and sports on your Television, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics was my own catch!