If you find out how, please let me know. I don’t know if men have this problem, too, but for women – me especially – eating meat and looking cute at the same time [at a Nigerian event] is next to impossible.
The cause: The meat is too hard
Who’s fault: The caterer(s)
Solution: Softer meat, please!
The little meat that couldn’t 🙁
When you go to an American event, the menu has well done, soft food. The meats – chicken, lamb, beef, turkey – and fish are always easy to cut through with a fork and knife and also easy to swallow. But for us (Nigerians), our food is different. For starters, our beef and/or goat has bones in them, and this is perfectly normal.
I don’t go to Nigerian events expecting to eat, and that’s because most times – in my experience – the food is just blah. But there are some events you go to where the food is just awesome, and you want to enjoy every bit of it. The problem starts when you encounter “The Meat.”
I don’t know what it is about our meats, but they’re always so damn hard. They’re not too hard to be eaten — if you were home, but when you’re at an event, especially a fancy one like a wedding, you just don’t want to be fighting with your meat. You want to cut through it easily with your fork and knife and chew it slowly with your mouth closed. The problem is …
1. The meat is too hard for you to cut through it with a knife
2. The silverware is actually plastic ware (those silverware that are silver-plated and look like metal, but are actually plastic – like the one in the picture), so you can’t cut through the meat.
3. When you force the silverware to cut the meat, the following could happen (A) The silverware breaks or (B) One of the silverware goes flying across the table and hitting someone in the head or (C) The meat jumps off your plate and lands on the white table cloth where you’re damned if you pick it up and damned if you don’t — cause you really want to eat this meat, but you don’t want to pick it up from the table. What will people think of you??? Or (D) The meat jumps off the plate and lands on your very light blue dress. Grrrrrreeeeeeaaaaatttttt!
4. You don’t want to pick the meat up with your fork and bring it to your mouth because (A) It might be too difficult to pull it apart with your teeth (B) It might fly off the fork and hit someone in the head — along with some stew and rice, (C) It will smear your lipstick and possibly your foundation.
5. You don’t want to pick it up with your hand because you’re not about that eating-meat-with-your-hand-at-a-wedding life.
6. Also, if you do decide to hold the meat up to your mouth with the fork and pull the meat off of it, you risk the chance of literally over-biting. So now, you have a mouth full of meat that is too much to chew and too hard to tenderize with your teeth and saliva. You have three options (i) Keep chewing and looking like a goat chewing on yam peels or (ii) Spit it out and gross out everyone on the table or (iii) Swallow it hard and drink lots of fluid. I have done this last one too many times. It’s painful going down your throat. Talk about the meat being a choking hazard.
So you stare at this meat in your plate and you imagine yourself at home, showing it all kinds of pepper by devouring it with two hands and no make-up. The problem with letting it go at this event is that it tastes so good and you’re so effing hungry! You don’t want to keep fighting with the meat and looking like the hungry girl who just can’t let it go.
Believe me, this has been my testimony many, many times. Too many times. The picture attached is a real picture of a good piece of goat meat I was struggling with at the 40th birthday I MC’d last month. I took the picture because I was going to share it on Instagram and talk about how tasty it was and how hard it was to cut it. But I never got around to doing it.
I mentioned in the post that the caterer was really good, and that was pretty much my downfall with the meat. If the caterer’s food wasn’t good, I would not have bothered with the food. And as the MC at a lot of these events, I just cannot be found struggling with meat; I don’t want that to be my reputation. Imagine if people were referring to me as “That MC that is always fighting with meat.” Bad business.
In conclusion, I’ll say to the caterers: Please take it easy on us. Don’t let us smell and taste the goodness of this meat, only to not be able to eat it. This is torture. It is a cruel and unusual punishment, and the constitution of the United States is actually very much against it. Thank you in advance.
P.S. I hosted a beautiful wedding on Saturday of a Verastic reader. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures. I went with Funmie, and I took my camera because I wanted her to take pictures, but where she was seated made that impossible. However, I’ll still do a weekend recount. Maybe tomorrow.
I always prefer to eat fish in public places, not just naija events, I don’t want to be struggling.
But Naija fish has bones in them. You gotta be careful, and you have to pull the bones out of your mouth with your fingers. Last thing you want is to be choking at the table during the best man’s speech. Lol.
say what??? if its a wedding where i know half the people there or the bride and groom are my besties…I’m so about the life of picking up that meat with my hands and devouring it. Afterall, I came out of my mamas belle alone o….hian….
Well, that’s a totally different situation then cause you’re in the company of friends. But in the company of total strangers … nah men. That’s for me anyway. I like to reserve a little bit of myself.
I lost it at “goat eating yam peels.”
Azuka, but it’s true nah. Lol.
I could have written this post. My thoughts on Nigerian party hard meats are exactly mirrored here.
Chjild boo! I have no shame whatsoever. Ok, maybe around total strangers. But give me an hour or so, and i’ll have minimal to no shame around them too.
I find if you make a light joke as you struggle, it throws people off. Odds are they are having the same internal conflict as you are anyway lol.
Lady Ngo, I’m all for making jokes oh (and I do that a lot too), but I would be so mad if that meat should drop on my dress or hit someone in the head. That’s the bad part. All I know is that caterers should keep us in mind biko. Lol.
As innnnn! Nos. 3, 4 & 6 are always my worst nightmares & not just at wedding fucntions! Any function varying from an office meeting lunch to any event at all. I honestly don’t understand why the caterers mistreat us so, there must be some sort of caterers code. Who knows, they may even be standing by watching to see who ‘disgraces’ themself first, ready to catch it all on video
Hahaha. Nonso, that would be funny if they catch it on video. I’ll make sure to stress the importance of soft meat to my caterer cause having tasty meat that you can’t eat because of its hardness is just as frustrating as eating soft meat that is tasteless. In fact, the former is more frustrating.
let me just say that as one who has had too many experiences with “tough-delicious” meats at parties, you couldn’t have said it better. About swallowing it hard and drinking lots of fluid, hmmmm…I have a bad experience I will share with y’all. So, it was I and my Cousin and the party started a little late and I was starving and then came this mouth-watering plate of very small rice and Oh God! The sweet memory of the meat. I dug in fast and before I knew it, it was a face-off between Tokunbo and the meat. I tried a left premolar, nothing. I tried a right premolar, still nothing. I tried to insert my canines in, no such luck and the meat was darn too good to just let go! Finally, I settled for the “Chew on it for a while and swallow the chunk, whole”. I chewed for a short while to avoid the whole “looking like a goat chewing on yam peels” thingy and then… I swallowed. I pushed with all my strength…The meat hung mid-way. Go down, e no gree, oya come back now, e no gree. The meat decided to stay between the devil and the red sea. I was choking. My cousin noticed and gave me water to assist my persuasions. That was the worst decision I’ve ever made. I took a gulp of water and this water refused to neither carry out its function nor go down either. It stayed afloat the meat all stuck halfway down my throat. Long story short, in a rush, the meat and fluid afloat it both decided to meet the devil. I threw up a large chunk of “not properly chewed meat” and water. Talk about all eyes on you. That is one of the most embarrassing moments in my life. Trust Nigerians now, always dwelling on what you should and shouldn’t have done. The women had a lot of advices on “how to eat meat at a Nigerian event…and still look cute” 🙁
Hahahahahaha. Tokunbo, I feel sorry for you oh, but I’m laughing my head off here. I’m imagining this meat stuck in the most uncomfortable place. It wouldn’t be such a difficult decision if the meat didn’t taste good because then you wouldn’t wanna eat it anyway. But it’s the tasty ones that are usually so hard. Thank God you no choke die oh. Who will now be reading this blog? Haha. Pele.
Tokunbo, i am rolling on the floor and laughing my pretty ass out! Sincerely, i kind of feel your pain.
As for me, once i look at the meat and i foresee the toughness, i just push it aside, no matter how enticing it looks. Maybe because i’m not foody though!
Earniewhine, I was laughing too. The story was just too funny. You had to picture it.