How I Make Palm Oil Bitter Leaf Soup

I would have titled this Banga soup but I've noticed that the people to whom these named soups are supposedly native to are quite touchy when the soups are made from creative recipes different from the ones they're used to. When I was growing up, my mum would make something similar to this recipe and we would call it palm nut bitter leaf soup in Igbo which I later found was quite similar to what is called Banga. In this recipe, palm nut is replaced with palm oil.

Ingredients

5 pounds of beef
3 fresh peppers
1 medium sized onion
3 heaped tablespoons of crayfish
1 pack of frozen shrimp
1 pack of dried bitterleaf
1 teaspoon of mixed native soup spices
3 ladlefuls of cocoyam flour
5 ladlefuls of palm oil

Four Fruits Beneficial to Skin Care

By Seyi Obasi

What do you know about fruits? They are healthy and provide lots of Vitamin C. They are very good for the body and do not require cooking or long processing. They help regulate our bowel movements. Did you also know that fruits are very good for our skin, and some fruits actually are cheaper alternatives to all the scrubs, masks and other chemicals we apply on our skins to look beautiful. Find below four of the most beneficial fruits for your skin, they are very popular and available in Nigeria too, and how they can help you look years younger!

1. BANANAS

Bananas are rich in Vitamin A, B and E; therefore they work as an anti-aging agent.
Mash a ripe banana and mix it with a spoonful of honey. Apply the mixture to your freshly washed face and leave for 20 to 30 minutes, then rinse off with lukewarm water.
You face will look and feel rejuvenated.

2. ORANGES

Oranges are rich in vitamin C and collagen that improves skin texture and slows the skin aging process respectively. Their astringent and toning properties help restore collagen in the body, improving skin firming and preventing early aging of skin.

The Body Glove Toughsuit Phone Case - Reviews

My Samsung Galaxy S3 in the Body Glove Mobile

When I got my phone, the store rep emphasized to me how delicate the SIII screen is and how the large surface area makes it even more liable to being crushed. True to his word, the phone screen cracked within a couple of months, and I spent over $300 to repair it. So I was really on the lookout for a sturdier phone case to protect the quite expensive phone. This review is sponsored by the Body Glove Mobile online store who sent me a free toughsuit phone case for my Samsung Galaxy SIII.

The tough suit protection of this body glove phone case is made up of four parts:

- A transparent plastic sheet which protects the phone's glass front;
- A hard shell which protects the back, and which extends beyond the phone's front;
- A gel case which adds more protection to the front and back;
- A hard plastic holder which allows you to attach the phone to a belt

Watch Last Flight to Abuja Online

We watched this movie just yesterday and a review will be coming soon. It will be a mixed one because while Last Flight to Abuja is above average for most Nollywood movies, there's a lot of room for improvement. But it's definitely worth $3.99 to see the story and support the producers, led by Director, Obi Emelonye. Below is the blurb of LFTA.

Based on true events. A set of everyday Nigerian travelers's board the last Flamingo Airways flight scheduled to fly from Lagos to Abuja on a fateful Friday night in 2006. The plane cruises at 30,000 feet, tranquil and on schedule. But like a bolt out of the blue, through a mixture of human error, technical failure and sheer bad luck, the plane rapidly develops major difficulties that sends it teetering on the brink of disaster. As the pilots fight with the controls of the stricken plane, a series of flashbacks unravel the twists, turns and leaps of fate that put each passenger on the fateful flight. Young lovers, an elderly couple, a corporate party, a sportsman on the threshold of greatness; all the passengers are caught up in the nightmare scenario and sense the final moments of their lives approach. All... except one! What does he know?

Picture Weekend - Out in the Sun

It's been a while I did one of my usual picture weekend, but with the sun making a brave comeback for spring and Summer, hopefully I can get some better shots worth sharing. These are from about a couple of weeks ago, and the sun was almost blinding that day. Loved it :)

Hope you had a great weekend. All the best for a new week.

The Wife Diaries - Episode Two

The hubby just told me some B.S to which I just nodded, kissed him and re-assured him we'll be fine. Something like he's afraid of other men looking and lusting after me and that he just wants to protect me bla bla bla...I was determined to find out the real truth so I called my girl Nkem on my hands-free as I drove to work that morning.

"O girl, e be like say e no ready to chop microwave o." That's Nkem. My brain has given up trying to analyse and decipher half the things she says.

"Wetin be dat?" I asked confused.

"He can't let go of wifey. He was getting too used to the meal awaiting him on the table after work and the ass awaiting him in bed when he needed it.” She chuckled, "he don't wanna let go.”

 I laughed. "Nkem..did you have to say ass? I feel so objectified.”

"Objecti-kini, but na true I talk.”

I sighed. "So you think that's it?"

"Yuuup.”

Nkem and I went to school together since we were in primary 1. Then we both got into the same secondary school, Jephta, but alas, her father got a cross-posting to Malaysia after our JS1 and then my dad got a job in the Netherlands. We lost contact for about 10 years until one day during my many visits to Nigeria we bumped into each other at The Palms. I was coming out of Shoprite and she was heading into it.

I immediately recognized her and could not believe myself! although she was heavily pregnant with my godson and had bloated up like crazy, I still knew it was her! I hate to admit it but later when I found out she was married to a white man, I cringed, knowing the history between white men in Nigeria and our beautiful girls. Nick proved to be cool though, so I finally approved - not that it mattered.

Inspirational Quotes - The Past, Present and Future

Live Theatre on Sunday - ManTalk WomanTalk

The next production of Live Theatre on Sunday will be of Ola Rotimi‘s “Man Talk, Woman Talk”, and it will hold on the 28th April 2013 by 4:30PM and 6PM respectively at the Unity Center, Isaac John Street, GRA, Ikeja, Lagos. Entry is FREE but seat reservation is required. To get a seat SMS your name and contact address to 08108156335.

How Do Modern Couples Express Love?

By Mgcini Nyoni

How do modern couples express love for each other? Honestly, saying I love you hardly cuts it and besides, we tend to say I love you to a lot of people whom we are not romantically involved in and the use of words and phrases like sthandwa sami (my love), darling, sweetheart... is random and hardly reserved for the person we call our soul mate.

Physical contact; kissing, hugging, holding hands… has increased amongst people who are not romantically involved and is no longer the preserve of that one, special person. So how do modern couples express love for each other? How do they show each other that they care?

Traditionally, it was the exclusive duty of the woman to take care of the home and family whilst the man provided for the family. In washing, cooking...for the husband, the wife showed that she cared. And in making sure that the family is properly provided for, the man expressed his love for his wife. It was not really necessary for them to tell each other that they loved each other. It can be argued that what was happening between married couples back then was not love at all, but that’s a debate for another day.

With the advent of civilisation, the exclusive role of the man as the provider for the family has been taken away. In a number of cases, the woman has continued washing, cooking and so on for the husband and this way women have maintained their way of expressing their love for their husbands. Men have continued demanding that women push the ‘taking care’ of husband and family role and in many cases, unfairly so.

Femi Fani Kayode Speaks on Love, Marriage and Divorce

I was a fan of Femi Fani Kayode while he was in the Obasanjo government. He was a good looking man, younger than a lot of the others in the cabinet, and well spoken. I knew nothing about him as a person or his personal life. And then I left Nigeria, he left the government and kind of faded from the public eye. My interest was rekindled in him after a politically motivated exchange of words he had with Reuben Abati.

And then he made the remarks about the dead girlfriend of Oscar Pistorius, [read here] which I found thoughtless and gratuitously provocative. When I learnt he granted a personal interview to this Christian blog, I was interested, and after reading, I think I see where those nasty comments were coming from. We are to believe he's a repented and reformed philanderer, who really loves his wife even though they're living separate lives and he just finished dating someone else not too long ago. Yeah, right.

I found his thoughts on love and marriage interesting, if not something I agree with. He presents a perspective that we rarely hear from. Most womanizers never speak up, and at least Fani Kayode is speaking from a place of knowing he made mistakes. On divorce, some could say he's taking a pro-stand because he's a divorcee, but it makes sense. Here are some excerpts from the interview;