This week’s guest Ntando Simelane, a philosopher and aspiring Crip, tackles food countercultre
Diced pineapples, that sounds pretty luxurious if you have had the pleasure of listening to a song by Rick Ross which shares the same name. Rozay never fails to evoke feelings of pure elegance when he chooses to do so. Just like the Captain of a ship, he is nothing without his crew. Wale begins the song with excellent poetry that is intent on making the listener know that they are about to jump aboard a vessel, that rides the waves so smoothly that it could only be compared to Michael Jackson moonwalking on silk sheets whilst holding a glass of whiskey with jazz playing in the background. Drake being Drake, patiently waits for Ross to finish his verse so that he can pull on the female audience’s heart strings by almost brainwashing them into thinking that this song is for them, which I find rather funny because he basically is like ‘yeah, this song is filled with sexual subs and takes on pussy but you bad right?’ and of course she’s bad if Drake says she’s bad, she so bad she good. Diced pineapples is an amazing song don’t take me wrong but its true value lies in the subs, how many can you pick up? Some might think that this article is going to be about all the pitfalls of our society, the music we listen to and promote and our intellectual capacities to understand the subliminal… You’d be wrong, this article is about a guy who likes pineapple on his pizza and realised the bigger picture of the disputes we have about what belongs on what and what doesn’t.
I’m a proud member of the Pineapple on Pizza movement, I’ve been so ever since my first slice. I never found this weird as the option to have pineapple on your pizza is on the menu of most pizzerias and restaurants, so there must be a demand for it and so there must be others such as myself, right? Well you’d be wrong, there exists those who believe that pineapple has no place on pizza. This realisation occurred when one of my close friends looked at me with disgust when I opted for the ham and pineapple pizza at Panarotti’s, for us to share between the three of us. He went on to explain that he found pineapple on pizza wrong because it just was, this sparked conversation as I and my other close friend didn’t really get it. We went on to discuss this but ultimately, we ended up spending our Friday afternoon at varsity talking about what we thought was right and what wasn’t in terms of food. I learnt so much from that day such as apparently it’s taboo to put mustard on your chips, putting sugar on amasi is wrong as you ‘might as well put yoghurt instead of amasi’, some lost souls will perish in the eternal fire of the Fyre Festival for placing sugar on top of their bread and Rama.
This had me thinking, we currently live in a society that tries everything to be different from the norm, so why can’t we be different with our food without being ridiculed? For me to better approach this issue I had to take a look at myself and remove all the prejudices I had, even after trying to do this I couldn’t do it as it was so embedded in me. I just had to look at it differently and actually think inside the box for me to find an answer outside of it. I decided to begin at our traditions in which lines are drawn and pathways made in the sand. ‘Bread and butter’ the pinnacle of simplicity, you can’t really go wrong with something seen as so basic, some would even say why would you want to do more? I find what people consider to be tradition in terms of what belongs and doesn’t belong on food rather tedious, as the answer for what belongs and doesn’t belong is in your mouth and not in your brain. Taste is what should be at the forefront of this war, who cares what tradition dictates when it will ultimately lead us to more separation as people and stagnation in our journey to culinary nirvana. We are so proud about how we live in the modern era but yet we still cling onto old traditions that were formed decades ago if not centuries, how are we to advance? Mind you, the path we choose in terms of experimenting with food could end in disaster for some in the form of mayonnaise ice cream but be pure ecstasy for others as it exists for a reason. A while ago, cheese in a burger was considered to be odd and those who would even try this would be shunned by the Pure Meat Lovers as it ‘gets in the way of the beefs flavour’, so would spices and various sauces added onto a burger, of which is now accepted after someone was bold enough to try improving traditional ‘beef flavour’ in a burger.
What this Pineapple on Pizza loony is trying to say is that we seem to take pride in the advances we make in fashion, music, ways of living and so much more but we seem to find it difficult to do that with certain foods, why? We praise people like Kanye and Kid Cudi for creating waves and allowing all to ride the wave when and if they choose so, but let a chef place a sweet fruit on my pizza and watch the outrage as I’m judged for trying to open my taste buds to an experience it has enjoyed. What’s the point of actually ‘trying something new’ if we live in an ever-advancing world which we accept but remain stagnant in our views, of what belongs and doesn’t on food. I would like it if you took the time to ask yourself what your last meal would be? After figuring this out, try to analyse your meal and see all that came from fellow loonies changing the game. I’m sure some of you would say ‘bread and butter’ just to shove traditional views up my face, but I hope you know that a while ago putting butter on bread seemed crazy so jokes on you.
I’ll end this dive into the dark abyss by asking you to refer to the first paragraph when you think about this piece and try to see how many subs are in it?