Young children have small stomachs and can’t get all the nutrients they need from just three regular meals. Older children need snacks to stay alert and energetic throughout the day. Healthy snacks are as important to your child’s growth and development as healthy meals. So, in today’s article, we will be talking about snacks only kids in the 90s can relate to.
Let’s take a journey down memory lane to a period when women of today were girls and men of today were boys. If you were a kid in at that time, I am sure you are familiar with these snacks:
- Baba dudu
- Pako biscuit
- Sweet with spoon/Sibjie
- Yale biscuits
- Ojukwu finger or Gowon’s fingernails
1. Baba dudu
Baba dudu is a dark brown rock hard candy made with coconut milk and sugar then wrapped in transparent nylons and made into strings. Dudu-Osun finds its origin with the Yoruba people in Nigeria, Benin and Togo. Its got a sweet bitter taste but really addictive.
Baba dudu is a popular and oldest Nigerian street candy eaten during the 90s. It is made with coconut and sugar. It is also called Ayigbe Toffee, Kube and other name. A taste of this will bring back your childhood memories.
Read more: 6 great snacks you ate as a child but would probably hurt you now
2. Pako biscuit
Pako Biscuit was the biscuit mothers bought for their toddlers who had excess love for junks. It was what we took to school when we were in nursery classes, and we fought it for hours. Parents who had money to buy biscuits and sweets now and then, bought stuff like wafers and other biscuits that kids devoured fast.
In Yourba, pako means ‘wood’. This biscuit comes in square form and in a transparent bagas just too hard, but we became used to it, and we eventually ended up loving it.
Pako Biscuit is one of the classics, and it is back in the Nigerian biscuit market. However, in recent times, I have eaten Pako a few times after its reintroduction, but it no longer tastes like what it used to taste.
3. Sweet with spoon/Sibjie
This sweets came with a creamy and chocolate mix and a lot of kids would start with one part of it and finish with the other part. When you’re done, there are other uses for the pack and spoon like dishing your own meal into it and eating from it. This sweet rocked our world back in the 90s.
4. Yale biscuits
Yale Foods and Vital Foods was founded by Souhail Joseph Nassar in 1981 to produce Twist Bubble and Robot gums. It was registered on 6th of June, 1995 and it’s current status is unknown.
There are different kinds of yale biscuits. This includes cream biscuits, cabin biscuits, wafer biscuits, cracker biscuits, sweet biscuits, coasters, digestive biscuits, etc.
5. Ojukwu finger or Gowon’s fingernails
The history of this sweet is unknown but from what I assembled, it was made popular after the Gowon/Ojukwu biafran war hence the name. It’s known by different names such as Hanjin legidi, Ekana dinka, Tsugba dinka (Nupe), Ojukwu finger (Igbo).
I remember buying as much as ten of this locally made sweet for as low as 1 naira back then. Looking back now, I guess my curiosity was congenital.
It takes about 25 minutes to prepare the sweet. All you need is a cup of granulated sugar, a cup of water, one tea spoon of Lime or Lemon juice.
What snacks will you recommend your children now?
In recent times, snacks preparation and variation has improved. There are a lot of snacks that easily made for kids going to school or for kid’s hang out. This includes:
- Egg rolls
- Plantain chips
- Meat pie
- Chin chin
- Puff puff
Egg rolls
In Nigeria, it’s simply egg roll as the name suggests. It is a boiled egg wrapped around into a ball with flour and deep-fried. The secret of a good egg roll lies in how well you prepare the dough. You can pack your kids’ lunchbox with egg rolls alongside any chilled juice.
Plantain chips
Plantain chips are made with plantain, ripe or unripe according to preference. And from it, a variety of snacks are made including roasted or fried plantains, chips, plantain pancakes, plantain pies, etc. You can choose from that variety for the kiddies lunch.
Meat pie
Meat pie is an envelope of cooked Irish potatoes, spicy and minced meat, vegetables and carrot fillings as your preference may lead you. It is tasty and yummy. It is popular in Nigeria. Most people use the oven, but if you don’t own one you can deep fry.
Chin chin
Chin-chin is prepared with well-kneaded dough, combined with a mixture of ingredients like egg, margarine, sugar. It can either be deep-fried or baked. Most people in Nigeria prefer frying though. Chin-chin is a favourite snack because it lasts four to five weeks if, stored in airtight containers.
Puff puff
Puff-puff is well known not just in Nigeria but in some parts of Africa including Cameroon and Sierra Leone. It serves as small chops in occasions in Nigeria. Puff-puff doesn’t take much to prepare it, but these days Nigerians bring more sophistication to it. The snack is delicious and spongy.
Conclusion
Finally, if you lived in Nigeria during the 90s, I am sure you ate the above mentioned snacks. Then, I also suggest you consider the current snacks because they are nourishing for your kids.
