I love the very idea of combining fruit and savoury flavours, especially in the way Asian cuisine knows how. I’ve watched Luke Nguyen cook with ingredients that are tropical and easy to find in Nigeria. But cook with them in a way so different, so foreign and appealing in that way ‘exotic’ cuisine is.
Happy Valentine’s Day: Celebrating Friends & Failure
My friends are the other children my mother didn’t have. In fact, in the course of my young life, I have chosen turned to them many a time…over the children of my mother’s womb. But now I am old and grey, and both have a place in my heart. I am thankful for my friends, and this season, I will celebrate them. Not with the perfect cake as I’d hope but with sincere thanks. My journey into adulthood has been fraught with corners, and junctions and sudden stops.
Wara, Nigerian Cheese Curds
Wara, a place in Kwara state, Nigeria: 8°25’60” N; 4°27’0″ E and 305m above sea level. Awara, food. Faux cheese aka Nigerian Tofu, made from soya beans. Wara, food. From Kwara state, fresh cottage cheese/curds made from milk. And currently formerly in my possession. —–00000—– My cheese curds arrived half way between saying goodbye to neighbours moving to Brunei, and getting the children ready for bath-time, dinner and school on Monday. S, my friend and roomate in Utah and Colorado had been home to Kwara state in Nigeria’s west, one of the 36 states in Nigeria for her grandmum’s funeral. She’d told me...
Nigeria’s Dry Season’s Produce: January/February
Some day soon, I’ll have a record that’s complete. I’ll know exactly when to lie in wait for mangoes, buy the best pineapples and feast on Ube, with corn. This is the start of that catalogue. The Nigerian climate, like most tropical countries consists of seasons, rainy and dry. Obviously, there are differences from north to south, in terms of the length of each season. In the south where I live, our dry season begins in October and lasts till early March with it being somewhat cold in December. The rest of the year is wet, save for a short period...
Take 2: Deep Fried Green Beans
I like it when this happens, when a regular visit to Food 52 brings up…to my surprise, one of my recipes on the front page! Along with a super gorgeous photo. Thanks Jenny, Mondays rock because of you! X X X[wpurp-searchable-recipe]Take 2: Deep Fried Green Beans – – – [/wpurp-searchable-recipe]
2013: My New Year’s Resolutions
My phrase for the year 2013 is ‘Peace in Fulfillment’. I will: Go to church and take my children to church. Get ‘serious’ about food. Really serious. Continue to build on the great things we’ve accomplished as a family on eating balanced diets. Read. Write. Go to bed early. Be comfortable with spontaneity. Continue to trust myself. Remain passionate about people. Well and truly. Fight for a cause. Any cause for good, for meaning, for life. —–00000—– I love New Year’s Resolutions. In them, I distill some of the things that I seriously desire to accomplish. It brings me focus, aim and...
Fried Prawn Heads
When I watched Justin serve up fried fish bones, in ‘The Next Food Network Star’, I cringed. ‘Another one of those recipes’. Someone was bound to write an open letter to the world about how fried fish bones make you a star. Or how instagram makes you the photographer of the year. Warner is referring to one of his final challenges in which he fried fish bones like potato chips and fed them to restaurateur, Food Network t.v. personality Guy Fieri, who loved them. “It’s been done in other cultures for many years, but in America, bones have always been...
Popcorn Cake: The All-Round Party Favourite
Neighbours. They’re the angels next door – not quite family, mostly friends and altogether special people, without wings. The ones God uses to teach us, to give us salt and sugar when we run out, to learn new dishes and how to hold a pencil correctly, share stories, talk about life and growing children, about marriage and about futures. I love my neighbours and I wouldn’t trade any one of them for anything. From The Netherlands to Nigeria, we – our neighbours and us, have established traditions of partying often. In the estate where we live now, in Port Harcourt, we’ve...
Our Gingerbread House – Breaking into 2013
‘Make a gingerbread house. In February. Or at Easter. Whatever happens, before Christmas 2012!’ Well, we didn’t make it before Christmas 2012, but we certainly did it before January the first, 2013. I think it crowned the year for my entire family – as in husband, myself and the children as we built the gingerbread house from scratch. First of all, I used up half my US luggage allowance to ferry back candy. Then we made the dough, baked the house parts, cemented them with Royal Icing and got us a house. Or rather, a gingerbread home. We broke it right after...