Oga Osas, I woke up the other day and was thinking of cornflakes for breakfast. Of course, I’ve not had that for years, because it is one of those things I am not crazy about. But the unfulfilled thought led to others.
I recalled I asked my daughter a day, after she made pancakes, to make me pancakes, but with cassava flour. She looked at me as if I was crazy; but since I still paid the bills in the house, she quietly obeyed. Since I asked for all ingredients used for wheat flour pancakes to be used, she did. The only difference was that I asked for a reduced amount of sugar and for the Igala cassava flour to be double-sieved.
No one in the house wanted a taste of it, so it worked well for me. I ate it alone with relish. By the time I finished, everyone wanted my opinion. I kept the opinion to myself before they finish the cassava flour in the house. They are still wondering.
Over Christmas, someone delivered ‘chin chin’ to us. It gave me a fresh brain wave. I pleaded with madam to make me chin chin with double-filtered cassava flour. Again, I got the ‘Our husband has gone mad again’ look, but I couldn’t care less. I enjoyed it, only this time, madam didn’t want the cassava pancake experience, so she took out of it. To this day, I have not got her full comments, except to say it is OK. You know the way they are: it is difficult for then to give a man of over 56 the thumbs-up on kitchen matters.
Already, I am making plans to go into the foodstore to divide the cassava into two and hide one portion, but I have not been left ‘Home Alone’.
Have you seen what the Chinese are doing with garri? Did you see the meat-pie one on social media?
Back to the cornflakes craving. After pondering over the implication of going to purchase the carton of it, I changed my mind, what with the emi l’okan economy in place. A crazy thought ran through my mind. If some crazies can process corn into flakes and people, especially in these parts, eat it like it has some silver nutrient apart from chaffey corn and vitamins, then I could opt to come up with mine.
I asked my daughter that morning to warm some water. “Boil or warm, daddy,” she asked.
“I said warm o.”
She dutifully obeyed knowing that ‘our husband is going to get culinary mad again,” asking for warm water at 7.00 a.m. She was sure it wasn’t the early morning warm lime/lemon drink.
“Daddy, the water is warm,” she said.
“Bring it, and while at it, bring the smooth garri you guys bought the other day…”
“Daddy, did you say garri…”
“Yes, I did!” I snapped. This one is not married yet and she is already acting like her mum.
She quietly went about the chore when I added,”please give me the kulikuli that was brought in from Minna by our missionary sisters.”
She didn’t say it, but I could hear the cranial computer whirring, “who does that for breakfast if not for this bush Igala man I have for a father.” I also whirled back my unspoken answer: “well, thanked God I am a bush igala man, what about you? A Gbagyi girl (born and brought up in Abuja, except for service year and post-grad studies in Ibadan) who does not speak Gbagyi, Hausa, and only a spatter of Igala.
That was the morning I knew honeyed garri and kulikuli was far better than cornflakes, milk and sugar!
So, bros, garri and kulikuli is a delicacy, especially if at our age, we use small, natural, honey, instead of sugar.
Also, sir, I think every single member of the wheat flour lobby which killed Obasanjo’s cassava bread experiment should be tied to the stake and shot. It is a wicked group, and should be brought down, like cost of petrol and solar panels are bringing down the generator lobby group.
One day, sir, I will tell the true story behind the insidious group, working with senators, that shot down Late Bode Agusto’s ambition of becoming a minister. Simply because the man suggested that the telecom deregulation solution that brought in GSM phones should be enacted to break the unholy hold of the power supply lobby group over Nigeria.
He was the most brilliant ministerial nominee then, but he was the only one not confirmed. Yet President Olusegun Obasanjo let it slide. And some of the journalists on this platform were, unknowingly, part of the coup against Agusto. May many of his type cross the Nigerian firmament again.
● This material was first published on a social media platform of journalists.