Diet Snaps

Cracked wheat, cooked in a pot over the charcoal fire, is an excellent and filling afternoon snack, especially if the afternoon is cold because of the rains.


Leaves provide essential nutrients for the Ghanaian diet, which is rich in starch and carbs. Vitamin C, Calcium, and many other vitamins have their main provisions from the addition to cassava leaves, and other leaves to soups and stew.


TZ, pictured front, is a mix of milled maize, cassava, and water, pounded and heated to a thick consistency and served with a soup. It provides the staple diet for people of the Northern Region, and was my dinner each night for the last three months. The stews would change each night, with a different mix of okrah, groundnuts, cassava leaves, etc. My favourite soup being groundnut soup with cassava leaves and okrah chunks.

Okrah has been cooked, mashed, and is here being boiled to form the basis for a soup. Okrah is readily available and joins onions and tomatoes in being one of the only vegetables available at the rural level.