Sour porridge

For those who have not yet been able to make lump-free porridge, don't worry, there's hope for everyone. I bet my porridge was the worst in the history of mankind, no matter how many times I watched mum do it, it either looked like water straight from the tap or something close to ugali. This is not the traditional (original) porridge we saw our grandmothers put away for days in containers to ferment, this is cooked in ten minutes.
Buy your 'Sour Porridge Flour' from the supermarket. This is my favourite.

You start by making a paste with the flour and water. This is where the confusion comes in sometimes. I actually never measure anything when cooking (Just like my mama did) but I did in this to put it down better for you. I took one and a half heaped tablespoons of the flour into a cup with half full water and mixed it to a smooth paste. The paste plus the water that will be used to cook is what determines the thickness of your porridge. Too thick a paste will give you thick porridge and vice versa if you use very thin paste.Look at the paste, not too thick, not too thin either. I put this paste into two cups of boiling water. Again, this is where you can make it or lose it. Before you put the paste into the boiling water, make sure you stir one last time, in case there's any flour sediments at the bottom of the cup. Immediately you put the paste into the boiling water, stir CONTINUOUSLY without pausing until the mixture starts boiling. If you do this, no lumps will be formed. Too much boiling water results in thin porridge, little water results in thick porridge. Once it starts boiling, simmer for ten minutes and voila, your porridge is ready to eat! (Yes I said eat. Porridge is eaten, not drank) 

French fries, fried eggs with colslaw salad

This is not what I had planned to have for Sunday lunch. My idea was to make coleslaw salad with apples and sultanas but as you can see the coleslaw salad here is just the  kawaida one. My mama always taught me to buy ingredients a day earlier if you already have plans to prepare something but I kept postponing since Friday. So I get to the market on Sunday and I find enough mud to swim through, conveniently cutting me off from the other half of the market where the apples are sold from. I had three options, to either swim through the mud, take a different (longer) route to the other side of the market or do away with the apples. The 'one minute prima donna in me' settled for the latter. But don't be disappointed dolls, we shall do coleslaw salad with apples soon. Since I really really wanted to have the salad I decided to have fries.

I love my fries a little crunchy but as you can see from the picture, they are a little brown as a result of running from the TV screen to the kitchen and back (don't try this at home).
Coleslaw salad is the creamy looking salad that you might have had in your favorite restaurant served with fries. This includes shredded cabbage, grated carrots with mayonnaise (I'm currently addicted to this salad). The mayonnaise used in this is Homemade Mayonnaise (recipe for this will be put up in a few days)

As I said earlier I loooove eggs (yes, even my ka local supermarket made a note of that, they should honestly give me a 'customer award' for that). When making mayonnaise, we only use the egg yolk and NOT the white part, so the eggs here were cooked from the egg white and spruced up   a little as seen in our previous recipe on fried eggs with veggies.

Fried potatoes, with pork and pineapples

In this, yes, you cook the pork with the pineapples. I love my pork with the fatty bits so I never discard them, again, this is optional. If you chose to use cooking oil, you'll want to go easy especially on this. Personally, I rarely use cooking oil when cooking any type of meat, I let them cook in their own fat, and you'll be surprised at how oily they appear sometimes.
When cooking pork, it is best to cook the fatty parts first to ensure they cook through and then add the rest of the meat later. When the water is about to dry up (note that this is water from the pork itself) is when I always choose to add my seasonings, these will include fresh ginger, garlic, rosemary, black pepper (I love spicy food, my mum says I should tone down my love for spices hehe). In this, I put the pineapples and onions together with the seasonings and let them cook for about 5-7 minutes and then added the green pepper just before I removed them from the fire.

As for the potatoes, I fried them just like you would with fries.

Carrot and pineapple salad

A few weeks back, I attended a wedding that had this salad served to the guests but I never got to taste it as I got there late and my cousin couldn't stop telling me how sweet it was. I decided to prepare it just to see what I missed.
Just as it's name suggests, the ingredients used are grated carrots and diced pineapples. For a little twist I decided to add some raisins. You can use the canned pineapples from the supermarket. Alternatively, you can buy your pineapples from the market.
Next time I prepare this, I'll be sure to keep the pineapples as far away as possible until I need to use them as I ended up eating half of them in the first five minutes.
Mix the grated carrots and the diced pineapples in a bowl, sprinkle some raisins on top (this is optional) and let them sit for a while to enhance the flavors.It is always best to cover salads as they sit. You can use a cling film for this.

Fried eggs with veggies for breakfast.

I could eat eggs on a daily basis and never feel 'yuky'. The only sad thing is that I have an allergy but it really doesn't bother me.
Anyway back to cooking, there's no excuse for doing boring fried eggs for breakfast. There are soooo many ways on how you can cook your eggs including adding them to salads.
This here is very simple. The only veggies I put were onions and tomatoes. What you do is to beat your eggs together with the veggies and fry just how you do your kawaida eggs. Sprinkle  dhania as it fries.

Turn to the other side till it's cooked and serve with or without any other accompaniments.

Githeri

Funny how I would get mad anytime mum cooked githeri even when it was very nice githeri. It has turned out to be another of my favorites.
This one only consists of boiled beans and maize but there are other ingredients that can be added  to this like peas, french beans just to mention but a few. Those are recipes for another day.
If you have your reliable Mama Mboga, it is a super fast way of whipping out a meal on those days  you get home too tired to cook time consuming foods. This here takes less than fifteen minutes to prepare and cook.
Together with the veggies the only seasoning used in this was fresh garlic which was fried together with the onions.

Fry the onions, add the carrots and cover with the githeri for 3-5 minutes (I prefer my veggies nice and crunchy), stir, add the rest of the veggies except the coriander (dhania), put very little water just to ensure it doesn't burn and cover to cook for an extra 3-5 minutes. Remove from fire and add your dhania leaves. Serve.

Rice, pan-fried liver with vegetable salad

The best thing about this meal is that it actually takes a very short time to prepare and cook though it doesn't appear like it. I added turmeric to the rice, it is always said, we eat food with 'the eyes first'. Turmeric adds a vibrant color to rice plus it has a lot of health benefits which we shall look at later.
The liver, cut in strips was pan-fried. All you have to do is add a little oil to the pan, any seasoning of your preference, your liver strips and cook till ready on both sides.
When just about to remove from the fire, I always add onions for added flavor. Adding them at this particular leaves them a little crunchy too.  To check whether the liver is ready, use a knife to slice part of the liver to see the inside. Well cooked liver is pink on the inside. If you see any blood then it's not ready yet.  

Ugali, Sukumawiki with fruit and vegetable salad

Another of my favorites is ugali, so expect to see more of it :-) As featured, this is Ugali and sukumawiki with fruit and vegetable salad. For a little twist and color, you can always add grated carrots to sukumawiki as seen here. The salad was a first time for me. I initially wanted to prepare Mango Salsa (that's a recipe for another day) but I couldn't get mangoes in the market so I opted for oranges and like we said it's always about experimenting with anything and everything edible in the kitchen and surely it did not disappoint. It actually turned out to be very sweet. 
The salad consisted of tomatoes, cucumbers, green pepper and orange. I added some white vinegar into this for some flavor.

Pasta, fried liver and veggies cooked in soy sauce and vinegar.

This is one of the fastest meal you can make!
This was a different brand of pasta bought from my local supermarket (I had my doubts but I still bought it after much debating with myself).True to my instincts, it didn't cook as well as my kawa brand. The good news is that it was edible. The bad news is that I still have the remaining pasta which will eventually have to be cooked. But as they say, we learn from experience.

The veggies here are actually partially cooked. These were cooked in soy sauce and vinegar (Like i said I am just your average girl having fun in the kitchen. I love playing with the ingredients). That was the first time I was doing that and well, I must say I wasn't disappointed. Crunchy sweet sour veggies.

Fried beef with steamed spinach.

I'm a sucker for any type of meat. Most of us are :-)
To start with, I never use meat tenderizer not for any specific reason, I just forget to include it in my shopping.
What I prefer to do, is to let the beef cook alone without adding anything on very low heat. Cooking on low heat, which equals to cooking for about 30 or so minutes, I believe is the secret to tender meat.
Just before all the water is dried out, that is when I add any spices like garlic, ginger, and anything else except for the onions which I put just when I'm about to remove the beef from the fire.