Anytime I try something different when it comes to food and cooking, and it hits differently, there's a tendency I'll take a picture. Okay, in Nigeria, our biggest and most staple food is lump, legumes, rice, and tuber. Most importantly, rice seems to be everyone's favorite food in Nigeria. At least, a higher percentage of people would say they prefer rice to eat any other food, Maybe this is just a food preference due to habitual eating, or just the psychological preference or superiority of rice to some other food. Many people grew up hating beans, sometimes I feel that it's because of its limited style of cooking it.
For example, beans can be either Jollof or stew, ? while rice had different ways of cooking it. Although many people liked how beans it was processed into moi moi or akara. One interesting thing is that Nigerian food is eaten in a recognized mixture and any mixture that felt weird was abhorred. For example, okra, a vegetable prepared into a soup cannot be used to eat rice.
That sliminess makes it unpalatable, but I've seen a Netherland Dish where okro is eaten with rice. Another thing is, that people are mostly known for eating bread with beans, not bread with rice, this is mainly a norm. Some type of food sounds stupid to the hearing, but when eaten, it's a different ball game and tastes better.
This is the same thing as looking at how tasty a dish is without even tasting it.
In reality, aesthetical appearance enhances the visual taste of a dish. When food looks appealing, it creates the urge to eat it. For example, hearing a person crunch a piece of chicken creates a pleasant sound in the ear which creates an urge. This is how seeming the thoughts of food mixtures are to Nigerians.
Before I heard of eating bread with coconut, 🥥 the thoughts alone felt despicable, but it was tasty when I eventually tried it. So, there are limits to how people can mix food if not, it might be considered mentally wrong.
There are eating patterns that might just suggest that a person is mentally unstable when they're okay and the food pattern does not have any medical repercussions. But, we draw the limits because of our ability to consume a mixture of food and not because it's medically consequential. Just like no Nigerian might eat a snake dish mixed with bugs, anyone who does so might be considered insane. Generally, eating habits stems from norms, cultural, religious, and normal belief.
Most people create preference from the antecedent of others. This is to say that people choose what and what not to eat by actually eating everything and making a life choice. Sometimes people change their preferences due to being persuaded and sometimes they do so by being explorative.
The Unique Creation
In this post, I shared a very unique good mixture that I prepared. This is jollof rice with plantain and stewed beans. I added locally made pap to the mixture, having it with sugar and milk. This looks queer or weird but it's absolutely exciting and I bet I'm the first to eat this mixture in this pattern ever. Like I used to say, cooking is an art, and one's expressive abilities are determined by how creative they are. In pictures, I added a black and white with the regular picture. Tell me what you feel.