The availability of jellof rice in the Nigerian wedding, can not be overemphasized. In fact, some people attend weddings weather they are invited or not, just to eat the jellof rice.
Different comedians have made jokes about the particular place you should seat, so as not to miss the wedding jellof rice. It has been observed that people who sit in front, are often the first to be served. But, there's been incidents where the people in front were not served. So some comedians have suggested that you seat in the middle. So that, if the ushers start serving from behind or from the front, you would not miss the special jellof rice.
Both the rich and the poor, struggle to have a taste of the wedding jellof rice. In every wedding in Nigeria, the availability of food, is the measure of the success of the wedding. Nobody who attends the Nigerian wedding, without eating jello rice comes back happy. In fact, to him, the wedding ceremony was a failure.
If you attend a Nigerian wedding for the first time, you'd think that people attended with an empty stomach. That's not the case. It is the case of wanting to eat the Jellof rice.
People say that there's a different taste that a wedding jellof rice has. Many people have tried to cook it at home but the taste was not the same.
"I love jellof rice. But everytime I tried to cook mine at at home, it never comes out like the wedding jellof rice " --Nigerian woman.
Another popular joke goes thus
"if you travel to another state for a wedding, and you don't get served jellof, what will you do?
The responder said "it's like the couple do not want to have children "
Even though there's a culture in Nigeria, that if you bring people together to a feast or a meeting, you should feed them, there's no specific food that they should be given. However, there's an unwritten rule about what guest should be served in a wedding ceremony... "jellof rice ".
Perhaps the unique taste comes from the fact that, it is cooked in a locally made gigantic aluminum pot or the fact that it is always prepared with firewood, or it is the fact that there's usually a particular kind of spice used, or the fact that the smoke from the firewood gives it a unique smokey grandma's food aroma.
In all this, TOMATOES is a very necessary ingredient in the preparation of jellof rice. And it is always the locally prepared tomatoes paste. Yes, Ovalz tomatoes has succeeded in bringing this kind of paste in big jars. To make the cooking easier and to keep tradition alive.
Maybe all of this factors work together to affect the unique taste of the wedding jellof rice.
Perhaps, it is psychological... The mind set. The way the mind works. The idea that it is jellof rice not prepared at home, but jellof rice prepared over firewood with love and joy for two people starting life afresh.
Written by Mary Jane
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