Is Drinking Garri A Poor Man's Food?

Well this is a very interesting and at the same time a funny question, which still is very important that it has to be brought into consideration.

In Nigeria, when a man drinks garri, the notion majority of the society would carry will be that the man does not have enough money to eat something better, the person might be seen as a poor person.

Drinking Garri is not even considered as a food, not even a snack, it is mainly seen by some as a food of poverty, eaten by only poor people, but even among the people of this Nigerian society who put this "Drinking Garri" on a mockery podium, there are those who love to drink garri, even when they can afford the normal three square meals or even more than that, they still would drink garri. Now the question is; Is drinking Garri bad?, is it a food for only poor people?

What is Garri?

Ok! Describing garri is sometimes very difficult for us, we do not know how to actually describe it, that is why I am dedicating my next blog post for the description and history of garri which i am currently researching on. All I can say until then is that garri is a cassava product, made by grinding the cassava and heating it up in a big pan while stirring it to give something like tiny hard baked granules.

So I call garri, cassava granules, yeah! Not flakes because it is not flat and wide. Some people call it Garrion.

Drinking Garri

Now to drink garri, you need just the garri itself, sugar and water, you dissolve the garri in water [more like a suspension] and then adding sugar, that does not sound nutritious enough to be called a good food, because you will only be consuming carbohydrates because both the garri [made from cassava] and the sugar are carbohydrates apart from water. This is the major factor that made people to call it a poor man's food and by the way it is very cheap to afford, at least it is the cheapest thing that can fill up your stomach and provide you only with the necessary energy you need to move around, just forget noodles, not too cheap as garri but cannot still fill you up.

Ok there are other ways to make garri even more palatable, Nigerians have found wonderful ways to garnish this starch ocean with nutrients, people take garri with groundnuts [Peanuts], milk, coconuts, honey, fried fish, cold water etc or sometimes all these at once and that gives a highly nutritious balanced diet. If you take it together with all those eatables mentioned above, you will begin to wonder why some people called it a poor man's food.

Clarification

Now! Garnishing drinking garri with all those eatables make it expensive, that some of us who are broke can't afford that whole arrangement, for those of us who are broke, we just opt out for just garri, water and sugar, sometimes we don't even think about the sugar, depending on how broke we are or for others, preference or health reasons.

So garnishing your garri with groundnut at least, milk, coconut and so on makes it better and more nutritious to consume for anybody irrespective of your financial condition, poor or rich, all I am just saying is that drinking garri is not bad, and should not be seen as a food for poor people only.

How to enjoy it?

On a hot afternoon, probably you are on your back from school, work, church, mosque or anywhere, as I have written hot afternoon, just buy iced water or cold water, get any quantity of garri you want, at least half derica cup, buy groundnuts [peanuts], enough sugar, coconut, milk. All what you have to do is to put pour the garri in a plate [not a flat plate], pour the cold water in the garri, pour enough sugar and milk, stir it properly to ensure proper distribution, you can put your already broken and sliced coconut on the garri and with a spoon drink this highly nutritous and wonderful meal and feel as the sweetness rejuvenates your energy. Trust me you will feel like beaten up those people who saying drinking garri is a poor man's food. We enjoy this food here in Nigeria rich and poor.

Watch out for my next post here on LET'S TALK. Enjoy drinking garri 😂😁😂😁😀😁😂😀😁😂.