Caboose

Apart from yoghurt there’s not a lot of dairy produce around in Nigeria. Milk comes as powder or condensed/evaporated in a tin, butter is only found in expensive supermarkets and cheese is something that comes in little triangular foil packages.

Blue Band margarine is very popular, but I don’t entirely trust a food product that doesn’t go off when kept in a warm cupboard for a year. My suspicion is that Blue Band is actually a form of spreadable plastic.

This post was triggered by me treating myself to a bottle of milk today. Two hundred and eighty Naira for one litre, so a bottle of milk costs more than a bottle of beer! I also passed by Baker’s Delight supermarket to get some imported Kerrygold butter. Nigerians really don’t understand the European fondness for dairy products (neither do Filipinos).

At first this seemed a bit odd to me, after all the country is full of cows. However the Fulani’s cows don’t produce much milk, certainly not up to the standard of European cows raised on special hormones and produced by centuries of selective breeding.

There is a cooperative dairy just up the road from NTI. On the right day they might even have something to sell. Last time I went there I bought butter, but they only sell kilogram tubs (400 Naira, much cheaper than the Kerrygold). After weeks of cooking with butter instead of oil, having bread, butter and jam for breakfast and even making shortbread I still had some left to throw away today.

I’m looking forward to cheese when I’m back home on holiday next month…