On Food: Ten (10) Things I Ate, Loved, Learnt, Did and Made in 2013

Can you really put it down to #tenthings? Well? If push came to…this is what my #toptenfor2013 is! This year, I travelled aplenty. My plate and by air. Morocco. By plate. Edinburgh. Holland. Welwyn Garden City. Manhattan. Rye. Niagara Falls. Brighton. London. Geneva. Lagos. And these journeys, these explorations brought me face to face, and sometimes to mouth with some pretty awesome things. Like Uni. 

Revisited for Christmas Dinners: Nigerian Gin Pepper Sauce & A June Plum Condiment

In 6 weeks, we’ve gone from clear to red. The colour of hot and spicy. I like. I like everything about the sauce. The discovery. The brewing. And the resulting flavours. Hot! Hot!! Hot!!! I’ve done the unthinkable – tasted the liquid fire. But first. From the very beginning. When you open up the bottle, you ‘smell’ it – scent it almost, a flowery, distinctly pepper scent. Then the taste test. First up you get the gin. Clear. As crystal. Cold. Slightly bitter. Then you get the heat. That spreads like a slow-burning fire. Creeping up and around on your...

Reasons To Believe: Thank You for 2013

They put up the tree. With no help from me. I’ve taught them well. They’ve bought the presents – no help required, save for a few Naira bills. They’ve picked what they want to feast on. Croquembouche. Cinnamon Sugar Breakfast Puffs. Coffee 🙂 For Breakfast. I’ve decided on Lunch. Roast chicken. Potatoes. Suya-spiced Roasted Butter-nut squash. Kumquat Salad with Herbs. (B….this one’s for you)! I’ll cook. I’ll bake.There’ll be cake. Drinks. A right celebratory feast. Dinner’ll be leftovers – for sure….I won’t cook after dark :-). I’ll dance to ‘Happy‘. Watch soppy movies. Cry. Laugh. I’ll sing (Sometimes terribly. Sometimes passably but...

Christmas Cakes, Bakes & Things

Anticlimax. Antithesis. Polar opposites. Diametrically opposed. This was my very weekend. One moment I’m complaining about ‘no harmattan’, and the next morning I’m the glorious recipient of a cold wave when I open my front door – ‘Harmattan’ has officially arrived. So now I can make my declaration ‘Its time to get ready for Christmas’. For they go hand in hand, just in case you ‘wondered’ out loud. I can say too how much Port Harcourt reminds me of ‘The Windy City‘. Which I’ve never been to, but which my friend Velva described as ‘having freaky weather’………The following day, it...