National pride. Patriotism. What you might call it. There was a certain feeling of absolute ownership and total knowledge I had about my country, Nigeria – its people, its culture, its habitat…and especially its food.
Surprise, surprise..for it turns out ladies and gentlemen, that my knowledge of Naija, while authentic is not as all-encompassing as I thought.
Passionate, creative home-cook & amateur food photographer sharing life stories to encourage and inspire men & women the world over.
Currently on a mission to create awareness about Nigerian cuisine - its flavours, history, culture and similarities with other world cuisines!His cries of ‘spice, spice’ herald new beginnings, but at only 4 years old…this little man knows it not. This is the first proper ‘thing’ to come out of our new kitchen ( long before our delicious churros which have been followed by cupcakes and pizza. I’m thankful I can still cook and bake!), or ‘shrine’ as my younger sister calls it. It could pass for one. Small, and walls bedecked with ‘oddities’ that might look like instruments of war…to the uninitiated – roasting needles, an old ice-cream scoop, whisks and a metal jug that some may consider fit for a rubbish heap. Not me.
Passionate, creative home-cook & amateur food photographer sharing life stories to encourage and inspire men & women the world over.
Currently on a mission to create awareness about Nigerian cuisine - its flavours, history, culture and similarities with other world cuisines!The Hague, July 2011
Imagine this: Its Monday morning in the official headquarters and I’m in the ‘war room’, surrounded by uber-tech computer screens, sitting around a large wood-panelled table. My entire body finds solace in a soft, black leather swivel chair and I sink in, armed for another work week. Chit and chatter fill the air, colleagues at a meeting - planning, sharing and strategizing.
Passionate, creative home-cook & amateur food photographer sharing life stories to encourage and inspire men & women the world over.
Currently on a mission to create awareness about Nigerian cuisine - its flavours, history, culture and similarities with other world cuisines!One man’s goodbye is another one’s hello. This month, my favorite things span two continents, thousands of miles apart, but places I’ve called home, back to back. I pay tribute… to the discoveries I made in the last hours of our stay in the Netherlands and share some of the things I love about Nigeria.
The thought of a favorite street in the world had never really crossed my mind till I happened upon the quaint, gorgeousness that is the Bankastraat, in the heart of The Hague. Of course I’ve admired Paris’s Champs Elysee numerous times, enamored by the street cafes, its chairs peppered with tourists staring out on the world. I was enamored with Barcelona’s avinguda Diagonal, glistening with glass windows and lined with trees. But when I first walked down the Bankastraat, minutes from my office ( a street whose existence I was completely oblivious to) and led by M of My Kitchen Diaries, I fell in love.
Passionate, creative home-cook & amateur food photographer sharing life stories to encourage and inspire men & women the world over.
Currently on a mission to create awareness about Nigerian cuisine - its flavours, history, culture and similarities with other world cuisines!We’re home – back on Nigerian soil. In the heat (and even with my nasal congestion), we’re in our land. It makes me smile…in disbelief almost. I can’t believe its been so long. My son says ‘Mama, we’re brown people, there are brown people here’. He’s only 4 years old so arguments about being ‘black’ are lost, in his favor. The world’s colour palette says brown…and so we are.
Passionate, creative home-cook & amateur food photographer sharing life stories to encourage and inspire men & women the world over.
Currently on a mission to create awareness about Nigerian cuisine - its flavours, history, culture and similarities with other world cuisines!So I teased you in my last post about ‘Coming to America’. Its all part of my bubbling excitement because the fartherest west I’ve been is Barbados – I know, its not a bad bookend. Now, I am glad, just like Eddie Murphy was in his film version ‘Coming to America’.
Read more…
Passionate, creative home-cook & amateur food photographer sharing life stories to encourage and inspire men & women the world over.
Currently on a mission to create awareness about Nigerian cuisine - its flavours, history, culture and similarities with other world cuisines!Nigeria We Hail Thee (1960) by Lillian Jean Williams
In Jesus name, Amen.
Passionate, creative home-cook & amateur food photographer sharing life stories to encourage and inspire men & women the world over.
Currently on a mission to create awareness about Nigerian cuisine - its flavours, history, culture and similarities with other world cuisines!Welcome to 2011: “Sometimes it’s easier to act your self into a new way of thinking, than it is to think your self into a new way of acting.” {Jo Berry, author}.
Small chops in Nigeria are all the rage – tiny, tasty bites of jazzed-up traditional recipes, served at parties of every sort. Think of them as the ‘tropical’ version of Hors D’Oeuvres: Dundun – fried yam, cooked in a mixture of hot oil and sprinklings of water, Mosa – mashed plantain fritters, Chinese style spring rolls, king prawns, puff-puff and fish, peppered snails and many more dishes.
The first time I tasted the combination of puff-puff, round fried balls of nutmeg-scented dough and crisp fried whitebait at a friend’s wedding in Lagos when I was fresh out of university, headstrong and single, I was pleasantly surprised – they went together like a sweet-savoury house on fire. Strange pairing but one I think which can be likened to a fishy sandwich on some European coast, or perhaps a Bajan fish cake, even if deconstructed, lessy fishy and much more tasty.
Passionate, creative home-cook & amateur food photographer sharing life stories to encourage and inspire men & women the world over.
Currently on a mission to create awareness about Nigerian cuisine - its flavours, history, culture and similarities with other world cuisines!At eight years old, I was full of ambition. I had my mind made up and nothing, absolutely nothing was going to take my dream away.
My dream of…. Read more…
Passionate, creative home-cook & amateur food photographer sharing life stories to encourage and inspire men & women the world over.
Currently on a mission to create awareness about Nigerian cuisine - its flavours, history, culture and similarities with other world cuisines!Don’t be deceived by the food porn you see in my regular KB posts: that’s not how I regularly serve my ‘food for eat’. Call me what you like (food pimp even) but I love everything about food – the components, the assembly and the presentation. I enjoy experimenting with colour palettes and taste palates, textures and light. I love to highlight the net skins of cantaloupes and the bum cheeks of peaches, almost as much as I enjoy sushi and (cooking with) wine. I love highlighting the beauty of a dish but that’s not always real – the pretty food you see on this blog represents a tiny portion of my food reality – please don’t take it as the entire gospel. Many a time, I bite into a juicy peach and barely have time to notice the soft downy skin, or the patches of colour. Sometimes I ignore the pleasure of eye candy and focus on the ‘taste’, enjoying the combination of flavour makers that results in a gorgeous plate.
One thing I’ve always wondered about Nigerian food is ‘Does it sit pretty’? My memories of food at home don’t involve elaborate/delicately styled food. Yes, plates are garnished – slices of tomatoes, onions and parsley greenery are common, as are molds of rice and sauce nested in bowls. Read more…
Passionate, creative home-cook & amateur food photographer sharing life stories to encourage and inspire men & women the world over.
Currently on a mission to create awareness about Nigerian cuisine - its flavours, history, culture and similarities with other world cuisines!
