Two years in Cameroon, and yeah, West African food is less than awesome. Generally we ate millet paste topped with leaves and peanut butter, with the occasional horror of tiny black dried fish if someone was feeling rich.
Peanuts are pretty essential. We ate peanuts three times a day, at least. Roasted peanuts, peanut sauce, candied peanuts, peanut butter’n’leaves, peanut porridge, dried peanut butter, peanut oil…
Let’s see. You could do donuts holes dipped in sugar. That’s a bit more Central African, but more kid-friendly than the donuts’n’beans we ate where I was. Simple candied sesame seed cakes were also popular. The only other popular sweet was a disgusting dry yellow cake people would make for parties. Oh yeah, and sweet popcorn- occasionally fortified with peanuts, deep fried dough, and bits of sugared deep fried goat meat (maybe keep that part out.)
Sweet potato fries and fried plantains were a common snack food, although the kids might prefer it without the standard habanero sauce. Any sort of simple chicken or beef kabab would be pretty normal. Fried chicken was also not uncommon at parties. Hard boiled eggs were a common snack. I don’t know if kids would like it, but I adored Koki. Lots of good and authentic recipes on that site.
Avocados were the go-to for salads, although a mayonnaise based green-bean and carrot salad was popular at parties, as was a simple cucumber/tomato/hard boiled egg salad with a sweetish vinaigrette.
You might get the kids into one of my personal favorites- the spaghetti omelet, preferably served on a baguette. just add spaghetti as you beat eggs for an omelet. And if you don’t want to do rice (which frankly only rich people could afford to eat often) you could do baguettes as the starch.
Fresh tropical fruit is a must, perhaps with some good thick yogurt.
To drink, have hibiscus juice, which I think you can find in Mexican shops. Yum!
Now I’m kind of hungry for a good African feast, although I never thought I’d want to eat these foods again!
