You dey chop?

Okay, for those of you who don't know Nigerian Pidgin English, that means "are you gonna eat?" So, of course we eat, but what do two Americans living in Lagos eat??? Well, really it's not too different from what we have back home. Our meals include tuna or pbj sandwiches, salads, spaghetti, pizza, rice and chicken stew, baked chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, scrambled eggs (a weekly event) and an occasional evening out to a restaurant such as the GQ (Bryan's favorite spot to watch football games). Something unique to Nigeria is IndoMie and is very similar to Top Ramen back home, but with a little more kick... Bryan loves it for his lunches and our students love eating it uncooked. For those of you who like spicy foods, as Bryan does, you would LOVE a food here called suya. Suya is basically a mix of spices and it can be used to flavor barbequed meats, seasoned peanuts... or groundnuts as they call them here, etc. Bryan actually has a favorite stand a couple of blocks away from school called "International Suya" that sells suya beef on shishkabob sticks. Every time we drive by it, he says "International Suya" in some new and crazy accent.

The fruit here is AMAZING!!! Our favorite, by far, is the pineapple. It is the sweetest, juiciest we've ever tasted. The sour ones here are pretty close to the best ones from back home. Pawpaw is a type of fruit that's pretty good, but not our favorite. Pawpaw tastes like a cross between papaya and canteloupe and looks like a huge (14+ inch) papaya. Keep reading for the really good stuff...

Now, the more important question is "what's for dessert"? I would say that we have three main desserts. The first one is due to Bryan's creativity. All of the grocery stores around here sell these funky, geometrical shaped juice boxes. We freeze them and have ourselves odd-shaped popsicles that are fantastic after being out under the hot African sun. Another sweet treat we enjoy are frozen m&m's. We don't necessarily freeze them because we like icy chuncks of choclolate, but we are greedy and don't like sharing them with our community ants (same goes for our cereal, flour, sugar, dried fruits, fig newtons... I think you get the point). Soft serve ice cream covered with chocolate and/or nuts is another favorite of ours. Chicken Lickin is a local "fast food" joint that isn't so fast and always seems to be out of small naira for change (coincidence or, as Bryan says, "the oyibofactor"), but makes for a nice outing with friends for a sugar boost. We could buy ice cream from the grocery store, but can't really justify spending $30 for one gallon. Last time we went to the store, we actually saw one of those large plastic ice cream containers being sold for N6,700. That's $51.54... and you thought a gallon of gas was expensive!

Well, now that you've been reading about food for so long... you dey chop!!