5/3/2023 0 Comments Substitute for okra![]() And other stories about slaves making the treacherous voyage to America with okra seeds hidden in their ears. It’s recorded that seeds of these and other seeds and grains were braided into the the hair of children in order to ensure they had familiar sustenance in the new and unknown land to which they were headed. Like rice, okra was one of the few crop seeds slaves were able to smuggle from their West African homes. Okra arrived in the Southern United States by way of the Caribbean at the beginning of the slave trade in the 1500s. They described the Egyptians cultivating okra and incorporating the young pods into their meals. One of the earliest accounts of okra being used as a foodstuff is by Spanish Moors traveling through Egypt in 1216. The word “okra,” first came to be used in 1679 in the Virginia Colony, also came from West Africans, a derivative of their word “nkruma.” That name (among others) stuck with deep Southerners for many years but today gumbo is a dish in which okra is an ingredient. In fact, West African slaves brought to America referred to okra as “ngombo,” the Bantu word for gumbo. By the year 2,000 BC okra has spread throughout western and southern Africa by way of the Bantu tribes fleeing Egypt. From there it traveled eastward to Arabia and other Mediterranean countries, including India. It was cultivated as early as the 12th century BC in and around Ethiopia, including portions of Eritrea, and Egypt. Okra, or ladies’ fingers as the pods are sometimes referred to because of their long, tapered, finger-like shape, is thought by many historians to have originated in east Africa. Even then, we were constantly trying new okra recipes in an effort to utilize as much of those delicious pods as possible-pickling it, cooking it with fresh tomatoes, freezing it, frying it, making fritters, and more. In fact, we had so much okra we were giving it away to just about anyone who would take it. It grew so fast that we were having to harvest every two or three days. So they did! Seemingly to make up for the slow start, they began producing a plethora of new flowers every day and within a week we were getting more okra than we ever imagined. That is until about the last week of August when the plants seemed to suddenly realize they were supposed to produce fruit. The plants grew to over eight feet tall, were extremely bushy but didn’t make a single flower and therefore produced no okra. In years past, the plants grew only about five or six feet tall and were somewhat spindly. Being lucky enough to have a wife who loves gardening and also shares my love of okra, she grows it almost every year.
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