Tasty Nigeria

Nigerian food is not so bad.

With a life in a hotel (hostel in accurate expression) in a location far from the town center, I tend to rely on street food venders for sustaining my energy and nutrients. Chili called Pepe is in almost every food, spicing up and giving me power to survive hard life here. I feel this chili based food diet may have been developed here with poor sanitation condition. I feel this chili is killing around germs and bacterias before they reach to my stomach... the flavor is a bit closed to Kimuchi when it is used for soup or meat stews. White bread is also nice here, definitely better than factory made cheap bread in USA. It contains a bit of sugar and oil, tightly made and has a good volume.

I, almost a vegitarian when I was in USA, now eat meat everyday. And my body changed amazingly. In USA my stomach really couldn't take animal protein or too spicy food. Here it is as if my body knows the reality that anything coming down to the stomach should be digested well for the survival. My stomach is very well conditioned and has no complaint with this sudden change of my food diet. I feel so much gratitude to my body which supports my life.

To show some of my dinner menu here..

Maize, tomato, grilled meat and banana. Too wild and simple? I am doing my best to balance nutrient!

BTW this maize's texture is amazingly wild, I mean so hard with few moisture in the seeds... it is almost like peanuts! But this hard and chewy creature is seriously addictive. That is (kameba kamuhodo ajiga deru.) Now I feel I am eating something more substantial than soft and sweet corn in USA or Japan and want to eat it almost everyday...

Pepe soup with meat, pepe soup with fresh fish (no alternative than Chili taste..) wrapped stuff is called Amara (lightly fermented cassava cake). This amara tastes very much whole grain and I feel it may be more nutritious than white rice. (No brown rice is available here.. ) The green colored sticky Okura sauce mitigates hot taste of Pepe.

Also in my village research, I am encountering fresh and nice (and safe) food supply time to time. Fulani, nomad comes to sell their fresh cheese which is very good. Villagers today gave me a sort of Kinako dango (sweet cake made by bean powder and some other grain powder) again tasted with Pepe.. this one is seriously addictive (sweet spiced with chili is always nice). Small fun can decorate a simple life lot.