Part C — So you want to study in the UK?

Food & Cooking: There is more to life than Fries and Burger

Editors note: Welcome to my series on how to thrive in the UK during your studies. To get started you should read this, then this and this respectively.

Jollof, is the more to life. Nigerian or Ghanaian? Argue in your Kitchen.

So yeah, we are back at it again. In all fairness, I am not the best of cooks. My sister ‘thinks’ I can’t cook. My junior brother ‘thinks’ I am too lazy to cook (owing to the fact that I spend a lot of time on my laptop). My Dad has legit written me off, he’s so sure I would be fine. My mum, well, I don’t even know sef. But, when I was coming here I tried to give my Dad some hope by making him one ‘powerful’ Spaghetti (By powerful I mean, he was impressed…nothing too serious, hehe). But the thing is, it really is not about what people think about you even though it might be a pointer, it is more about what you think! (sorry, I didn’t mean to be inspirational on top food, LOL)

So, what do I think about my cooking skills?

I had never given this much thought because I always believed that I would marry a wife that doesn’t just know how to cook but also loves to cook. Now, with all these Twitter Standards, mans kent be sure.

Second, when the time to travel to the UK came, I felt like since it is burger and pizza everyone eats there, I would just join them and be eating…I mean they are not dead, so I won’t die. Also, I thought I would use that scope to collect (additional) money from my family members because for obvious reasons fast food is more expensive than cooking at home.

Below is an imaginary conversation between a son (used interchangeably for ‘me’) and his mother

Son: “Dear Mother, it’s your boy Eazi. Please send money because, things are expensive, the only thing that is cheap here is Chicken and Chips = £3.99”.

Me writing to my mum

Nigerian Mother: “Can’t you cook?”

My mum replies

Son: “Oh my Gawd, can you just send me money 😭 ”

Me complaining

If you don’t want the above to be your case, then nicely package as many foodstuff as you can. The one thing I know they would not allow is (powder)milk but you can bring your spices, Garri, Stock fish, Indomie (you might want to pour it out of the carton), Beans etc. You can buy rice here (long grain rice is closer to the one we eat in Nigeria, but more expensive that basmati).

At least, with that you’d be good for some time till you settle down and get a per-time job.

Other food items you could buy when you get here; bread spread, cereal, even fries, eggs etc.

This way, you’d have enough money to do other things like buying ripped jeans, going on dates with babes (if you’re singu 😊), travelling etc.

Cooking Utensils — where to buy them?

Don’t know whether to talk about this now or in the Money section.

Oh well, let’s do this.

For a place like Lancaster which is majorly a student community. It houses University of Cumbria and University of Lancaster. There are some shops known as Charity Shops — where old students drop /donate some of their used items and then the shops sell them at a very cheap price to make some money for Charity. Things like Coats, Cooking Utensils, belts, irons etc can be found there. But here is my recommendation;

For cooking utensils buy from the Charity Shop because of 2 reasons;

1. No real Wear and Tear — I am not sure there is so much loss of value from a glass plate or an iron spoon.
2. No one sees it — Only your girlfriend, flat mate and all probably know the kind of pots and plates you use. So you can afford to buy used ones.
3. Save money — of course, that is the whole essence of this, your parents probably know the price of a good pot; but then you just saved 50% for yourself!

With Clothes, it is quite different. We’d get there in another post.

Then again, if you are just doing your undergraduate studies here then, you should probably buy more durable things.

Before I forget, we should learn to make some of our local food. It helps foster friendship; like, when you invite your friends of color over to your house treating them to some nice traditional dish would always lead to a conversation (LOL).

Perfect your cooking skills before coming

Next post:

Part X — So you want to study in the UK?

Thanks for getting up to this point in my post. Kindly ask me any questions in the comment sections. Or if you school in the UK and have advice related to Food and cooking, also, kindly share with us in the Comment section.

Don’t forget to click the little heart icon to show your support for this post. You might also want to share across your social platforms for your other friends to see and learn. You can follow me on Twitter and Medium to get notified when the next post is published.

Previous articles linked above are;

What they didn’t tell me about studying in the UK

Part A — So, you want to school in the UK?

Part B — So, you want to study in the UK?