Day Eight: Drinking

Got your attention, didn’t I?

Well, I do want to talk about beverages. The drink is bissap.

Start with a hibiscus, a tree with lovely blossoms in a variety of colors ranging from deep, rich red and melon orange to creamy peach and light blue. The blossoms are delicate. They last for a single day.

Here, in West Africa, hibiscus blossoms are used to make this amazing and refreshing beverage called bissap. The red blossoms--only the red blossoms--are boiled, sweetened with vanilla and sugar and chilled. The result—a thick, ruby-esque liquid that tastes...well, it tastes like bissap! And it’s amazingly healthy, loaded with antioxidants, helping control high blood pressure, lowering high cholesterol and strengthening the immune system with its rich vitamin C content.

Could it get better? Absolutely. Boil dried Monkey Bread Fruit, which comes from the Baobab Tree. (See “Le Petit Prince” for additional information about on this species and a variety of other spiritual and philosophical issues.) Add the white, milky liquid to the bissap, and what you get is like a dark pink milk shake without the milk. Also a cure-all for gastro-intestinal ailments.

When could a martini ever make health claims like these?