Welcome Back To My Space!

Hello beautiful people! It's great to see you stop by, and so I want to say thank you for always taking time to read and engage with my content.

I know you all will agree that every where in the world, inflation has made the prices of things to go up. Cost of living has become higher than what it used to be. Yet, no matter how high it gets, as humans we have to come up with coping mechanisms, especially as it concerns the basic necessities of life.

One of these basic needs is food, and the way things are going in many parts of the world, it is very important for everyone to take find out how to ensure that they get the best quality meals at the most affordable price possible.

Mission: Experimenting With Frugal Meal Ideas

In this post, I want to share with you a report on a recent mission I embarked on with the support of @hiveabbyftp and the @earnspendgive community. Note that this post is the first in the series of reports, and is for the first cooking project in my mission/assignment.

Of course, the other reports will be published separately so as not to make this post overly long and confusing. So, without wasting time, let's get into it.

I had received a transfer of 12.5 HBD from @hiveabbyftp on 5th August. I didn't start the project immediately because I wanted to make sure I had the right template for the report after completing the project. But then, I found a template he had already shared in this post, so I decided to get to work.

By the time I finished moving the HBD through the process of converting it to NGN, the 12.5 HBD gave me 19,563 NGN. So with this amount, I began my project.

For This Edition...

I have chosen to prepare a meal of unripe plantain porridge which is a popular dish eaten in different parts of Nigeria.

_Source

Ingredients And Prices

• Unripe plantains @ 2000 NGN
• Red Palm oil @ 1,200 per 750mls bottle (I bought and used only 200mls @ 300 for this).
• Hot Habanero @ 400 NGN. I used half the quantity bought, ie 200 NGN
• Dried Crayfish @ 500 NGN per milk cup (approximately equal to the normal 250 milk cup). I used about 200 NGN for this meal preparation.
• Dried prawns @ 500 NGN per saucer. Again I used about 200 NGN.
• Onions @ 500 NGN for 10 medium-sized bulbs. I used about 200 NGN worth of onions.
• Stock cubes @ 350 NGN per 20-cube pack. I used about 100 NGN worth of that.
• Herring Fish @ 2,500 NGN per Kilogram.
• A bunch of Ugu leaves (fluted pumpkin leaves) @ 200 NGN.
• A handful of basil leaves @ 100 NGN.

I also bought 1kg of cooking gas (not an ingredient, but required for this project) in my 6kg camp gas cylinder @ 1,300 NGN per Kilogram. I am of the assumption that the quantity of gas used could be about 200 NGN, if only I had a way to read it.

So from the above, I prepared a pot of unripe plantain porridge with about 6,400 NGN.

The Procedure

• The plantains were washed, peeled and diced, then parboiled in boiling water (more like blanching, anyway) to reduce the gummy substance that discolours the water, before allowing to drain in a colander.
• The fish cuts were washed clean, seasoned and allowed to marinate before steaming briefly. Then, they were transferred to a grilling basket, and grilled over hot coals.
• The stock for the porridge was prepared by adding some water to the saucepan on fire. This was followed by the red palm oil, ground pepper/onion/Crayfish/prawn mixture, then stock cubes and salt to taste.
• As the stock was brought to boil, the drained plantains were added, stirred and left to cook on medium heat, being checked at intervals.
• When the plantains were well cooked, and the stock thickened, sliced basil leaves were added, allowed to simmer for about 2 minutes before turning off the heat.
• The ugu leaves, which had been washed and sliced while the plantain was cooking, were added to another saucepan, and steamed with onions, one stock cube and a few drops of palm oil to make a sauce to garnish the meal.

Time Taken

Washing, peeling and dicing the plantains was the most stressful part of the process, though it took about 30 minutes.

From Washing the fish, seasoning, and steaming took about 35 minutes, while the grilling took about another 30 minutes (just to dry the fish a bit).

The plantains were cooked for about a total of an hour, considering that there was a first stage of parboiled before the main cooking was done.

Taking into consideration that some of these processes mentioned above took place simultaneously, I peg the total time spent at 1hr 45 minutes (may be just a little more or less).

What About The Taste?

Yeah, I know that you are waiting for this part of the report, lol 😆. Why not take a look at the final outcome before I tell you how it tasted?

The food tasted absolutely delicious. No, I am not exaggerating about that. The food was enough for 5 people to eat and be satisfied, and the five of us that ate the food had the same feedback to give: it was more than delicious (for lack of words, lol).

Apart from being delicious, it was nutritious and well balanced, with all the nutrients being in the right proportion.

To order a plate of this in a decent restaurant in my neighbourhood, you can't get it for less than 3000 NGN. It may even be more than that. Multiply that by five plates and that will be about 15,000 NGN for a dish I made with 6,400.

In Conclusion
Going with the current exchange rate, I used about $4.06 for this particular project.

In my next post, I will be sharing the second part of this Frugal Meal Preparation experiment. For now, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section, and I will get back to you.

All images in this post are mine, as well as the video.

Thanks so much, @hiveabbyftp, @monica-ene and @earnspendgive for all the support you provided for this project.