SUNDAY RITUAL

Why is it a ritual for most households in Nigeria to have bread and tea for breakfast and on Sunday
mornings? The bread goes with either tea or some sort of beverage,eggs with or without tomatoes,
pepper, onions and a pinch of salt and seasoning to taste. Some others have it with baked beans or
sausages. This happens in many major hotels in Nigeria. And,Then rice is either for lunch or dinner.

'Haba! Is it every time we should have bread for breakfast? Why don't we have something else that
is light and nutritious for a change?' These were the words I told my flatmate. He is quite a good
cook and his specialty is Italian cuisine. Mention any pasta or sauce and he knows his way around it.
If pasta were fattening, I would have been a drum by now. 'Would you have pancakes instead?', He
asked. At the sound of pancakes, I was so excited.The sound of it reminded me of one of the times
he made pancakes in the past with some syrup to go with it.' Yes oh!'. It felt like Christmas day. 'But
you have to help me out in the kitchen',he said.

Different people, I guess, have their different ways of making pancakes and I really needed to learn
a few tricks. As he poured some clean white flour into a bowl, I asked if we needed to measure it.
'When you don’t have a measuring cup in your house, what do you do?' Paolo, asked me playfully.
Next,he added some sugar to the flour and then,a teaspoon of baking powde. The four whisked
eggs were added to the sweet smelling mixture. As he stirred the mixture,he sprinkled some nutmeg
and pinch of salt to taste. It got all thick and then,he added warm fresh milk to lighten it up. In case
you don’t have liquid milk, you can use powdered ones. The frying pan was heating up under th
fire with some vegetable oil. Paolo used a deep spoon to pour the mixture into the frying pan, that
were the mixture took its shape in the process of frying.The number of pancakes depended on the
number of scoop.

It looked lovely and I couldn’t wait to snack upon a piece or two,At least something different from
the regular bread and whatever.There are actually different ways of making pancakes.This is
just an archytypal method.You can add ingrdients like sardines or corned-beef.You can also be
adventourous enough to use runner beans or chopped carrots and add on top while frying. I had my
lovely breakfast with a warm cup of milk. Tell me,if that wasn't balance diet?It okay to break away
from preceived convention especially with the menu and preparation of meals and try to be creative
with our cooking and menus.