Feshelu
I am certain I have mentioned several times that I am a “Federal girl”, I went to a federal girl’s college in Nigeria and I graduated in 2003. My high school experience is one I cherish a whole lot and I would do it again, yes!! Punishment, slavery and all.
In my school, we were allowed provisions and more often in my suitcase I had; garri, sardines, salt, and chilli amongst other things. We were very creative in those days, we made eba from cold water, we cooked indomie in cold water, we made sauces from oil and geisha, we made cake from garri, milk and sugar and most importantly, we made FESHELU.
Feshelu is a combination of garri, chilli pepper, sardine oil (Titus preferably), salt and sardine fish.
Some weeks back, I had a serious nostalgic feeling and I decided to eat feshelu for supper. Feshelu is a concoction of Garri, sardines, salt and chilli powder. I don’t expect that anyone would actually try this recipe, but I will share it anyway.
Ingredients
1/2 cup dried garri
1 table spoons of water
A pinch of salt
1 tin Titus sardine
Chilli powder
Directions
In large bowl, combine the garri, 1 table spoons of water and about 1 table spoon of sardines’ oil. Mix until the garri is soft and fluffy. Break a couple of sardines into the garri mix, finish with salt and pepper.
Enjoy!!
The one I still do till today is Golden choco milk flakes. We combine golden morn mixed with Corn flakes… One handful of cornflakes in a plate and 3 full spoon of golden morn… 4 spoon of milk and 6 spoon of chocolate…. Mix all together and get a leaf of paper… Put 2 spoon of the mixture each on a paper and fold. Then after that make sure the iron is as hot as ever and iron the papers, don’t just place the iron on top… Just keep moving it until it gets hard and stiff… Trust me, u are going to love this combination.
Foodie which federal school did you go to? and did anybody boarding school have those scaring stories of mr white and miss koakoa with the red high heels.
I loved the cabin and butter, I still do it?i would exchange my other provs for a pack of cabin. Just that I don’t readily see cabin in the uk, so I use rich tea biscuit. Funny right?
I can so remember doing all of dis things , my best aside from d garri cake was d toasted bread whereby you iron a loaf of bread with butter and milo n milk. Good memories
Fun times
Woooooow, this is serious o. Remembering my boarding house days @ IEC
D comments are so hilarious, I’m also a federal girl and what we did dn was cook rice wt boiling ring add butter, pepper, salt and maggi all contrabands. We also prepare eba wt gbegiri, we get the watery beans from the dinning and convert it to gbegirir. Heaven on earth. Enjoy.
Reading this is too funny. I went to eva adelaja girls. I remember the garri cake for every birthday (my favorite), every sat we eats eko and stew, but instead of the stew, we make tampioca- break eko into pieces,with milk and sugar and ready to go; we make cold noodles, soak it and add spices; we drnk water from well wen there is no water (omi knoga), we did d cabin biscuit, chocomilo, feshalu and eat with stew, we wash plates with soap and water without sponge, we fight for ori eja in every meal.. good ole days with cutting grass, slavery, punishment..
I love your creativity and all the federal govt girls college talks. I am alumni myself. Love love what you are doing here and your tips on dieting with nigerian food is excellent. Most people think dieting means cutting off nigerian food but i feel our food is great because we cook from the scratch with no preservatives. Love your work.
Well I did not go to school in Nigeria (went to school in Cameroon) but it’s crazy how similar boarding school antics are! We def had the garri and sardine thing (called it ‘bash piakata’ lol) where we’d mix garri set in cold water and crumbled, with sardines, pepper, maggi. Curry and ketchup optional :). We did the whole” cabin biscuit in milk thing, and cooked by perforating empty peak milk tins with knives and then placing a candle in the tin, and an aluminium plate on the tin (or cookie tin, who remembers those blue ones?). We got to boil spaghetti and rice (using 4 or 5 candles donated by all dorm members lol, and cook stew and even fry eggs! Hardened Ovaltine was the ish, that thing could keep you going on a hot sweltering afternoon listening to boring teachers! We never ironed bread, but man o man that sounds like it could have been delicious! Especially with those boiled eggs from the school canteen…*sigh* Those were the days man!
Hmm! so nice! i didn’t go to a Federal boarding School, I attended a girls only Government College in Lagos. I remember my JSS 3 days,we were really GROSS back then!! We had a big tree at the extreme end of our field with bushes around it to shield us when carrying out our naughty antics,lol. We brought old pots n stuffs from home n hid them on the tree to cook, using firewood for fuel. When we were writing our Jss 3 exams, we took to cooking lunch for ourselves each time we didn’t have afternoon papers. Oh! it was such fun sleeping under the tree with our tummies full! Alas! our tree was later cut down but by then we had decided to behave like seniors in SSS class, lolz.
Great memories!!!
I also used to make biscuits into cerelac.I would break the biscuits into 2,rub the cut edges together so that it would become fine powder,mix in some milk and sugar.Delish
In my sec school,the only thing I remembered trying was eko and milk with a generous amount of sugar,and I loved it.However,in my primary school,Mayflower(barely survived for 1 year before I was taken out) we used to make indomine with cold water and garri cake too.I have heard of some people using toothpaste to decorate it.onto some dangerous levels,I used to paint my okin biscuits with pencil lead,for some strange reasons,it tasted delicious. Oh! and I heard that in one private university like that(I won’t mention names),they use electric kettles without the ring to cook balanced diet meals,as in rice and soup
OMG!!! Nostalgia in waves!!!! i also love my Sec. Sch experience, it was not easy to be a boarder mehn! esp those dry periods after exams when everyone is practically broke both in provisions and financially…lol…we’l v to contribute d ingredients for the food sef. Feshelu, EbaNGay(Eba and geysha mix wit some pepper for seasoning),Cabin flakes,Ironed bread (u slice d bread,butter it and put watever u want in it then butter d front and back,cover with paper and iron away!lmao!! if u dint have a white Binatone/Grey Philips iron u were dulling!!!-those irons were made for cooking not ironing) ,Indomie in cold water (we called it soaking) indomie biscuit(u breakup d indomie,put the spice in it and shake 2geda), concotion rice/spaghetti and chocobumbum….Good ol’ days
Just stumbled on this and couldn’t resist adding “soak and travel” when you have very little garri, add water and leave it to rise so it would be filling…lol, after the garri is swollen, you add milk, sugar and whatever provisions you have left…after exams “owu”
our version was different, i schooled in the north, we called ours Garri Kodo. Garri, we add granulated kulikuli, onions, little g/oil, grounded dried pepper, salt, little water, if u like add tomatoes, mix everything together , oh la la, paradise.
lol…
I remember those sweet-bitter FEDECOL days, we soak indomie in cold water till it’s soft and then we sieve out the water and add the follow come spice. yummy!
wow! what didnt we do in those days. i went to FGCL and we did the chocolate milo thingy too, but the way we did our fesh (short for feshelu) was a bit diffrent. we actually made EBA with the garri, and made soup with the sardine and spices. dat was our saturday nite meal. great recipes tho! stay blessed
Hahahahahahahaha,as a fed babe too; i also concur wit Zino abt d chocolate stuff, we called it chocobombom. we did d ebaNgay recipe nd it called kwado. Wow d cabin flakes is stl one of my favourite junk food, d soaked indomie mixed wit sardine. wow gals, am jst thinkin of d gud old days; wasn’t gud back then sha! d bullyin, manual labours nd hunger strike,gush, can’t bliv i went thru all those. wow! talk abt d cake made wit grounded cabin biscuits, sugar, milo, water, milk nd blue band. hmmm…yummy.
Good food for those days .
looooolll!as a federal chic maself, i can remember doin almost all of d above.the most insane was d chocolate oe, we wld use a whole tin of milo, a feww drops of water and it would congeal into a small ball, then we would remove our florescent light covers dat had dese little’choco milo’ like boxes and fix d chocolate into d cubes.gosh!!!!!we were really jobless den.
Good times!
OMG, the comments are way too funny and I am reeling with laughter here.I went to boarding school in Lagos so it was pretty easy to have proper food smuggled in by day students but I totally did the soaking noodles in cold water thing…#memories.
hahhhaha
Lol memories! We made biscuit cake using cabin biscuit, milo and milk. We would break the biscuit into pieces and grind it smooth, then add milo for coloring, put in a bit of milk and water. Then mold into a dough and leave out in the sun to bake. Viola you got the cake! It was yummy!
you baked it in the sun? OMG
We are creative in Naija o. we used the sun to bake and we established this at a very young age. E go better for naija truly
Very very creative
I heard of making noodles with boiling ring, but some of the other concoctions I have read here, I have never seen before o. It’s a wonder some kids didn’t suffer from food poisoning.
Hahhaha… we all had very high tolerance levels.
Wow it seems things really progressed in Federal schools
as we were not allowed most of these types of contraband. In my school, Benin in the 90’s, the most i can remember is soaking noodles in hot water taken from the kitchen, ironing bread with paper to make toast. I cannot really recall anyone cooking inn my house but heard rumors it happened inn other houses.
OMG.. Cooking was the ish in my SS3. we took the cooking stoves from our Home econ class to the hostel…. OMG… I even stole kerosine from the school mosque (Forgive me God)
Oh myyyyyyy, now that’s a CLASSIC 9jafoodie…..lol!!!!
Girl that would be gourmet meal in my boarding school days. We just made the garri in cold water and open geisha can and viola…mealtime.
hahahhahah….
So loving these old memories!!! LOL!!!
lol
OMG!!!9ja foodie…are you sure you didn’t go to my school???? ahn ahn. This was a staple meal in our ‘Hostels’ back then. The Indomie soaking, I didn’t like at first but got used to it later and cabin biscuit and butter…oh Lord! Loved it! we did the ogi flakes too in my school and we went a step further with garri by making garri cakes! …lol anyone ever heard of that?
You mix garri with loads of milk (peak milk ofcourse…no cowbell here), few spoons of milo, sugar, mix till its ‘fluffy’…lol and u can even go wild by adding M&M’s or sweeties or whatever..I know it sounds gross but it was yum most times and we’d cut it on someone’s birthday like a proper birthday cake…
who said Naija students weren’t creative eh ;-)
LOL…FADE! maybe I did.. lol. lol@no cowbell.. peak milk was the stuff!
@Fade, was just about to say the same thing until I saw your comment i.e that I think foodie went to our school..lol
But in our school or at least within my group of friends what foodie just described was called kwando (sp?) while feshelu was eba made with cold water, most often prepared by a friend whose last name rhymes with ‘cold’ lol!
Wasn’t a fan of gari cake though, ogi flakes were much better with heaps of peak milk and sugar…mniam:)
Looolll, this brings back memories. Indomie (contraband lol) soaked in cold water. Horrible now but it worked then.
It was the best thing then.
Aaaah! I remember back then… we used to make our own chocolate. As in, we’d pour milo on a piece of paper (that was pre-wetted lol) and cover it with another pre wetted piece of paper and then iron the living daylight out of that thing until it congeals. Ah! Hershey’s cannot hold a torch to us jare
lol… i find that very funny, Nikisho did that as well we never did in my school.
What???? LMAO
:D
I also had a fried gari alternative to soakis, the recipe is similar to this one. And I did the cabin flakes, curdled milo, etc LOL…
Good times!!!
*sighing* Eba and geisha. I hated the mere thought at first but grew to love this in my senior years. Cabin biscuits in milo? Heavenly. Milo left to harden in paper on top of your locker? Oh what joy this local chocolate gave me during afternoon prep! Some added milk, I preferred mine solo. Lol! Some licked just powdered milk. Yuck . Found that quite eugh. Remember the powdered tree top? Dunking Nice biscuits into that was fun too. My, my, thank you for bringing these memories back 9jafoodies. Oh, oh, there was also the sardine and planta butter mix we would smear over cabin biscuits and squeeze till those little ooodles of butter would pop through the holes in the biscuits. Lol! Just butterly delicious!
OMG….. THE CABIN BISCUIT AND BUTTER STUFF!!!!!!!! OMG!!! THAT WAS the ish!! ….. how we were so unafraid of weight gain and stuff then.
i soooo remember the cabin biscuit and butter thing tooo…AAAAAH!!!
Lmao!!
Feddy girl all the way!
We did ebangay well well but there was also ebansaa(here sardine-titus) was substituted.
Iron was used to make sauce. How? Iron would be plugged,a flat aluminium plate placed ontop ,then add butter(which serves as groundnut oil),spices,pepper,crayfish if available,tin tomatoe if available. If dem CATCH you sha. It has bee on those involved.
OMG… Iron for cooking??? waooo… that is creative!! lol.
This post is so hilarious. Hey 9jafoodie, looks like you guys were really enjoying. Nikkisho, toasted bread? That is too much enjoyment now. You will tear the bread like that LOL
My dear, it was great. lol
I went an Federal school too. One of my favorite recipes was: “EbaNgay” short for “Eba + Geisha”. Boilers were contraband, but “lawbreakers” brought them anyway. We would boil hot water with the boiler and make eba, then make a Geisha concoction to resemble soup.
In the Geisha soup we put geisha, palmoil, seasoning (salt + pepper + crayfish), and some girls brought mixed spices, we would add those.
It was a pretty decent soup… but required many tins of geisha. It was definetly a “celebratory” meal usually eaten on the last day in school.
HAHHAHA…. THIS IS AWESOME!! we didn’t have lots of boilers, so we learnt to make eba with cold water. You add a little water at a time and mix until the eba is set. It wasn’t half bad. I never liked Geisha for some reason, I had always preferred Titus.
Ahah! That one na correct balanced diet… nothing remain for the soup now?
I know right…. lol.
Sounds like you went to my school.
The comment was for Cakes and Socks.
ah u r a fediben babe. Ebangay defo
I remember you told me before…and the name is funny to me.. “o feshelu- ayakata” haha #random. The one we made then was just with groundnut/palm oil, sugar and garri.
There are so many things we did but i will write some
1. when we wanted toasted bread we would “iron” our big loaf of bread, we would also iron milo and set it aside and when it is it becomes CHOCOMILO
2. for garri cake like you mentioned…aah we would design ours with butter and smarties (“go-go”) as per icing now..lool. We did cabin flakes too like victor mentioned…let me stop..Thanks for taking me back…hahaha
we did the chocomilo thing too. It was like discovering fire :D
OMW! I cant get over the ironed milo… hahahha. We added some water to the tin of bounvita and left it out to set ( 3-4 weeks) at a time. Good times!!
Cabin flakes. i.e substituting cabin biscuit for corn flakes.
Direction
– break biscuit into suitable pieces
– add milk, [as required]
– add milo,
– add sugar,
– knock yourself out
It was celestial
OMG….. You guys were not afraid of getting fat???
hahaha! the torture and scorching sun were weight stabilizers
YES! YES!! YES!!! I was definitely all about this life… hahaha and some people started making ogi flakes too chei
When hunger strikes, EVERYTHING is an option
ogi flakes? how did that work? cabin in ogi? hahahahha… the hustle is real
i think its eko flakes (eko is from ogi…sebi?)…i used to do that too sha..break eko into small chunks and throw them in milk :)
It reminds me my bording school in Benin, Togo. We also eat Gari with sardine, water, or with milk, sugar, and ice.
Good days… lol