a note on food. 

so when i came here i had no idea what to expect in terms of food, at all. but you can basically get anything that you would normally eat, or at least a variation of it. so most nights, the roommates and i eat pasta or stir fry with rice. usually with alot of vegetables (they are in plenty here: tomatoes, carrots, spinach, cabbage, lettuce, cucumber, green peppers, hot peppers, etc). and oh man, the fruit! pineapples, mangoes (mango season is just starting and i think i like them now!), bananas, plantains, strawberries, papaya, watermelon, yoghurt fruit (delish!), oranges, lemons, etc. it is just nuts the amount of fruit they can grow here that we can’t in Canada. i will miss the amount of fruit, and the inexpensivity of it. 

most nigerians eat a diet that involved pounded yam…their yam is white here and they pound it into a fine powder in these big wooden bowls with big sticks. and then do lots of things with it. but mostly put it into big lumps and eat it was agussi soup. i don’t appreciate this food very much. at all.

but they do make this wonderful thing called red stew, which is basically boiled tomatoes with oil and peppe (a hot spice). and it is delish. and you usually eat it with rice or pounded yam.  

most nigerian diets also consist of many things that are deep fried or just contain alot of oil in general (palm oil, veg oil, etc). this leads to extremely high blood pressure and a ridiculously high rate of stroke. 

the only things that i really miss in my diet here is a regular dose of meat. it is kind of expensive…you can buy meat on the street, but it prolly is not fresh and would prolly kill you. we bought some whole chickens and cut ‘em up. and some ground beef. but yeah, i can’t wait to eat a steak back home. but nigerians can’t make chocolate to save their life. so that is what we ask for if someone comes over from the west. 

but food is good here. and besides clothing, is really the only thing to spend your money on….who would have thought!