My grandmother’s hands knew the weight of salt long before measuring spoons entered her kitchen. They moved with quiet certainty, transforming simple ingredients into memories that refused to expire. Today, as I stand in a modern kitchen flanked by food delivery apps and pre-chopped convenience, I find myself wondering: what stories are we losing when we stop cooking? And what parts of ourselves vanish with them?
The kitchen isn’t dead—but its spirit is quietly slipping away. Our countertops shine. Our appliances blink with promise. Our fridges are stocked. But the soul of the kitchen—the sacred, slow ritual of transformation—is being choked by the cult of convenience.
The Rhythm of Remembrance
In many African households, the kitchen has never been just about food. It’s where stories are told through texture, rhythm, and repetition. The steady thump-thump of pestle to mortar. The hiss of onions hitting hot oil. The low, deliberate bubbling of stew. These aren’t just background sounds—they’re ancestral echoes.
To cook is to remember. Every time we recreate a recipe passed down orally, we participate in a living archive. The techniques learned by watching elders, the tweaks made when ingredients were scarce, the spices chosen not just for flavor but for healing—these are the threads that weave together our cultural DNA.
But what happens when those threads are no longer passed down?
Across cities like Lagos, Nairobi, and Johannesburg, the culinary rhythm is changing. The youngest generation is more likely to know how to build a playlist than a peanut stew. Sunday dinners are increasingly ordered, not simmered. Kitchen counters become Instagrammable backdrops—not spaces for soulcraft.
And in losing those recipes, we’re not just forgetting how to cook. We’re forgetting who we are.
The Colonial Echo in Convenience Culture
This loss didn’t start with Uber Eats. It has roots in a much deeper, more violent disruption: colonization.
When colonial systems were imposed, they didn’t just take land—they dismembered knowledge systems. Cooking, once central to cultural identity and collective survival, was reframed as backward, domestic, or unworthy of formal preservation. Colonial education exalted Western methods while sidelining local wisdom—including in the kitchen.
Fast forward to today’s globalized economy, and you’ll find the same devaluation repackaged. Fast food franchises sprawl across African cities like emblems of progress. Traditional markets, once the beating heart of communal life, are pushed to the margins—if they survive at all. Imported noodles outpace millet. Preservatives replace preservation.
What’s worse, we’re now watching a new kind of colonization unfold: the commodification of our forgotten traditions. “Superfoods” like fonio, moringa, or baobab are rediscovered—not by our children, but by Western health influencers who sell them back to us with markup and white-washed branding.
Convenience isn’t just about speed. It’s about power—who decides what is worth remembering and what can be erased.
The Meditation of the Mundane
Cooking is often seen as a chore. But for those who grew up around it—who remember being sent to fetch water for pounding yam or peeling endless cassava—the repetition held something sacred.
Cooking is meditation masquerading as a mundane task. It calls us into our bodies. It forces attention. It resists multitasking.
Watch an experienced African cook and you’ll see something profound: intuitive timekeeping, spiritual attentiveness, ancestral flow. There’s no recipe—only rhythm. Smell tells you when the palm oil is ready. Sight tells you when the tomato stew has lost its rawness. Touch tells you when the dough has come alive.
This kind of mindfulness is rare in today’s world of pings and push notifications. And yet, it’s embedded in the very act we’ve chosen to outsource.
When we stop cooking, we’re not just losing flavor—we’re losing ritual. And in cultures where ritual once held community together, that loss reverberates far beyond the plate.
The Economics of Authenticity
Let’s be honest: most of us aren’t skipping cooking because we hate it. We’re skipping it because life is relentless.
Capitalism has engineered our schedules down to the minute. Commutes. Deadlines. Hustles. Productivity hacks. Rest becomes a privilege. So naturally, the slow, nourishing act of cooking seems indulgent—or even irresponsible.
But time, like money, tells the story of our values. When we say “I don’t have time to cook,” we’re often saying, “Cooking no longer ranks high enough to fight for.”
And yet, the math of convenience doesn’t add up.
A $20 food delivery may give you one meal. That same $20 could stretch into a pot of egusi soup or a tray of samosas that feeds a family and fuels a memory.
Cooking isn’t just economical—it’s educational. It teaches children where they come from. It teaches patience. It teaches adaptation. Most of all, it teaches that nourishment isn’t something you buy—it’s something you build.
We must ask: what are we truly saving when we save time? And what are we sacrificing?
Reclaiming the Kitchen as Sacred Space
To reclaim cooking is not to reject modernity. It’s to decide that heritage deserves a place at our increasingly digital tables. That ancestral knowledge isn’t a burden—it’s a birthright.
Start with one dish.
Not a viral recipe. Not a five-minute hack. Start with something that lives in your lineage. The rice dish your mother made when guests came. The soup your father simmered during the rainy season. The snack your aunt packed for school days.
Don’t just copy the steps. Ask the stories behind them. Why this spice? What moment called for this dish? What laughter or lament was stirred into the pot?
Let cooking become communal again. Turn on music from your childhood. Invite friends to help prep. Teach your kids to taste with their tongues and with their memories.
Let the kitchen become a site of resistance. Of recovery. Of reconnection.
The Stew of Our Stories
Food isn’t just sustenance. It’s story. It’s sovereignty.
Each dish carries something more than calories—it carries code. Embedded in every jollof, isombe, wat, or bobotie is a memory of place, people, and survival.
These are the stories of mothers who stretched ingredients and made feasts out of scarcity. Of grandmothers who stirred pots like spells. Of fathers who returned from the market carrying not just groceries, but love in plastic bags.
These stories don’t survive in apps. They live in the muscle memory of those who cooked before us. In the smell that makes you homesick for a place you’ve never been. In the taste that makes you feel known.
If we don’t keep cooking, we risk losing more than flavor—we lose history. We lose the intimacy of inherited wisdom. And we lose the power of feeding ourselves in ways that matter.
The kitchen isn’t calling us back to servitude—it’s calling us back to self. To sovereignty. To story.
In a world of instant everything, cooking remains gloriously slow. Gloriously human. Gloriously African.
What cooking traditions connect you to your heritage? Share a story about a dish that carries your family’s history in the comments below. And if this resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it—let’s keep these conversations alive.
Africlout 