Eating well, one month at a time.

This month: new yam, used properly

Yam is everywhere right now and it is cheap. It is also almost pure starch, which makes it a good food and a terrible whole meal. The difference between yam that helps you and yam that pushes your sugar up is not the yam. It is what is on the plate beside it and how much of the plate it takes.

The September market list

• New yam: in season, at its cheapest now.
• Beans: the single best-value protein in any Nigerian market.
• Ugu and other leafy greens: plentiful through the rains.
• Garden egg, okra, tomato, pepper, onion.
• Eggs: cheap, complete protein, and easy for children.
• Groundnut: protein and healthy fat; good in soup and as a snack.
• Crayfish: a small amount adds protein and flavour and lets you cut the seasoning cubes.
• Pawpaw and banana: cheap fruit, good for children and for constipation.

Three meals from that list

1. Yam and egg sauce, done right. A fist of boiled yam, two eggs scrambled into plenty of tomato, pepper and onion, and a handful of spinach wilted in at the end. Add the vegetables until the sauce is more vegetable than oil.
2. Beans and a little yam porridge. Cook the beans, add small cubes of yam rather than making yam the base, then palm oil measured with a spoon rather than poured. Ugu stirred in at the end.
3. Roast yam with groundnut and garden egg. The roadside classic, and genuinely good — the groundnut supplies protein and the garden egg fibre. Eat it sitting down rather than in the car.

The year, month by month

Each theme follows what the market actually has that month.

Five things that hold true every month

1. Stop drinking sugar. Soft drinks, malt, sweetened yoghurt and "fruit" drinks undo more than any food.
2. Half the plate vegetables. Not a garnish, half.
3. Shrink the swallow, grow the soup.
4. Fewer seasoning cubes. Use pepper, onion, ginger, garlic, uziza, curry and thyme instead.
5. Beans several times a week. Cheap, filling, and it flattens the blood-sugar spike of whatever sits beside it.