Crying Relief With Onions

I don't like onions.

And the simple reason for that is that they are just about the only food I prefer to eat while in it's raw state.

Once I find a piece of cooked onion (whether glazed, fried, caramelized, in stew or soup), I go completely off the food and it takes a lot to get me to keep whatever portion I have eaten down.

Okay, over time and with the impracticality of finding onionless food in restaurants and other people's houses, I had to find a way to adjust. What came easy to me then, was picking out the onions from the food and piling it on one side of the plate.

Jollof rice, soup, beans porridge, yam pottage, moin moin... wherever the onions hid itself, I would find it and i would pick it out.

So, how do I manage at home?

Ta daaaaa...

I blend my onions in bulk. Buy the lot, peel the lot and blend the lot!

Don't you just want to tuck in? Looks like ice cream, yeah?

Advantages:

1. You only get to cry while peeling and slicing onions, just once. Subsequently, it is a crying relief to cook straightaway without needing a handkerchief.

2. No onion strings.

3. A smoother onion flavour.

4. Always readily available, just pop out of the freezer and into the pot (or dish).

5. You can store the way you need. So for instance you can store in cupfuls for your stocks, soups, stews and heavy duty cooking - read jollof, porridge, etc; or you can store in tablespoonfuls for your one-mouth dishes, omelettes, seasonings, etc...

Like here...

Stores in ice cube bags (ice cube trays work as fine too but I pass because they don't cover and the smells tend to mix up).

So, nice way to store your onions if you ask me. Also helps to work around that pesky situation of onions rotting in the rainy season.

PS: If you are my friend, please always preserve onions this way. That way, you wouldn't have a whole load of picked out onion string to irritate the heck out of you whenever you have me over for a meal.

Please?

Tenkiu'.

Take Seven for Christmas...

If you are a child of the late 70s and early 80s, then like me you are most probably holding yourself from spiralling into depression as Christmas approaches.

What is this season?

Is this how to "do Christmas"?

You were not "inform"?

Biko, #BringBackOurChristmas o.

Somehow, Christmas doesn't quite seem like Christmas these days and no, it is not because we are now adults and the ones who have to sit with glasses perched on the tips of our noses while we "add and subtract" on a Casio calculator.

Because, "after the Christmas comes school fees o, school fees... school fees...".

It must be way more than that. Anyway, don't know about you, but here are seven things I miss the most about Christmas past:

1. Christmas Carolling: No, not these fanciful ones where you go and sit in a fancy church and have a fancy band and fancy musicians and comedians entertain you over fancy refreshments, this was the real koko.

You and a band of friends would spend a few days (or weeks if you have too much power), putting together a Christmas "choir"; troll the streets from house to house, belting out mismatched tunes at the top of your croaky voices; then hang around until the homeowner comes out with a few nairas for coca cola.

Those were the days.

2. Christmas cloth: If you don't get to "sew Christmas cloth", then you don't know what you are missing.

Your parents would find 20 yards of the same Ankara or brocade material, and the entire family would march off to the tailor's at least two full moons ahead of the 25th of December.

Come Christmas morning, the entire family with well pomaded hair and faces would march off to church, looking like a pair of cut out paper men holding paper hands.

3. Christmas chop: See, it was not about the jollof rice and goat meat, it was about starting your Christmas cooking at least one week ahead with the snacks and pastries; then starting the jollof the night before, and completing the cooking around 4 am on Christmas morning.

Then, irrespective of your ajebo status, getting a tray of different Christmas chop loaded on your head and trudging from house to house to deliver to your family friends.

My mum held pride of place as the first to finish with cooking and have her steaming Christmas chop in her friends' houses before the cock crowed.

4. Christmas goat: You know, this should be number three.

The careful selection of the goat a few days before christmas.
The tethering of the goat at the front of your house (your neighbours must observe and acknowledge say you no dey joke).
The fattening of the goat for a few days.
The slaughter on Christmas eve after night mass.
The singeing off of the fur.
The cutting up of the bits.
Pepper soup with the intestines.
Fried and stewed goat meat
Jollof rice and goat meat.

Omo forget o, goat meat is the king of meats!

5. Christmas "yawo": Again this is one Christmas activity that does not care about your ajebo status.

From morning till night, you are permitted to trek the entirety of the country (or until you run out of breath), going from home to home, parking yourself uninvited on any spare chair you find and waiting for number 6.

6. Christmas dash: Also known as "brother gbaarum christmas".

When you get to each and every one of your destinations as seen in number 5 above, first comes the Christmas chopsin: rice, chicken, goat meat, salad, chinchin and "minerals" (soft drinks to the uninitiated).

Then when you are done eating and drinking, this is also the one and only time of the year you are permitted to shamelessly beg for alms.

"Uncle/aunty/brother/sister gbaarum christmas", and out would come the shiny naira notes.

This is one of the few seasons in Nigeria when you buy naira with naira in order to appease gullible terrorists disguised as children. We were so "wise" then, that we preferred four shiny N5 notes to one shiny N50 notes.

We could count one to four.

And we knew that four is greater than one.

We were rich o, but only at Christmas.

7. Christmas breath: if you woke up on boxing day anything less than constipated, then you obviously did not have a good Christmas.

You are a learner.

The trick was to eat so much of a combination of all sorts from so many different homes, that your parents would spend a mini fortune on Andrew's liver salts and laxatives the next day to clear your stomach. They would also spend the equivalent of your proposed inheritance on air freshners to clear  the stench of  your rotten breath from the house.

And your local chemist can still make it to the village before the New Year in time to pick a wife from the left overs.

The ones the "innit" boys from "the abroading" did not pick.

What are your Christmas experiences like? Then and now, which do you prefer? Let's hear your stories.