Marga/Marag

A friend of mine never tires of telling us how she once tried to break away from the routine of preparing the familiar dish of timman wa marag (rice and stew) for her family of four. She cooked juicy creamed chops with a side dish of French fries, instead. ‘They ate those, all right,’ she would say chuckling, but then came the inevitable question, ‘Okay, now, where is our timman wa marag?’ This shows how futile it is to try to depart from a routine which has been ingrained in our eating habits and sustained us for more than five thousand years (see Introduction). Indeed, why try to do so in the first place? Timman wa marag is delicious, healthy, easy, convenient, and economic.