RECIPE FOR SUCCESS (HOW TO PREPARE POUNDED YAM)

It's amazing how these days when you order for pounded yam at any restaurant in Lagos, you have to be specific like; "Real pounded yam o. Iyan. Not the other type, emmmm, the yam flour... yes. poundo yam.. not that type. POUNDED yam. Thanks"

As far as I'm concerned, poundo yam is just a different version of semo-vita. Well, for those of you who love to eat pounded yam but can't pound it, I'm going to teach you how. I'll teach you how to pound yam for 20 people. I know some of you are screaming like; "aaaaaah! you want to kill me?! 20 people?!"

Relax, it's really not that difficult. Our Yoruba ancestors already developed a system for that. I'll explain shortly. To prepare pounded yam for 20 people, you'll need about 4 to 5 tubers of yam (I'm a generous hostess).

1. Get help. You can do this alone but it'll cost you more time and energy. Besides that you'll pound them in about 4 to 5 batches, which means your pounded yams will have different consistencies. So, you see, it's better you get assistance; one or two people.
2. Once you've gotten assistance, let's say 2 extra helps, two of you can start peeling the yams while the other starts setting the fire and prepping the mortar and pestles; 3 pestles precisely. This process is called Division Of Labour.
3. Boil the yam in water; no salt or additives.
4. Once it's soft, let one person drop the yams in the mortar while the other two pound the yams. You're going to do this in 2 batches.
5. Once you've all agreed on what quantity makes the first batch, three of you can start pounding. It's an art I can't explain in writing. If you're interested in learning practically, contact me.

See, for every pounded yam you eat at an owambe (party), it took an average of 3 people to pound it at once. That's the only way to prepare pounded yam for 200 guests. If you really want to learn about team work, you should go watch women cooking for a Nigerian Party. Everybody naturally handles a chore in their area of strength. It's not a competition. If you ever see them fighting, it's usually over meat but they always resolve their issues by the time the food is ready.

It's amazing how you attend a Nigerian Party and somehow they serve over a thousand guests with surplus leftovers and you find out it took less than 24 hours to cook for over a thousand guests . This just shows the power of team work.


To succeed as a Christian music artiste, you must understand that you need a team. You can't do this on your own just because you don't want to share the money. You need a good management team to go far in your career. The dynamics for creating and marketing music for a hundred fans is different from the dynamics for creating, marketing and exporting music to a million fans. You can't possibly respond to all your emails at the latter stage, or attend all meetings and shows and still have time to strategize, negotiate, handle your finances, create music, perform,manage your family, etc; You'll burn out.

You need a team to handle all that for you while you focus on creating and delivering your music. But you must begin now to learn how to work with a team. Like I said about pounding yam for 20 people; not to say you can't do it alone, but you'll expend more time and energy and your results won't be as consistent and enormous as it would if you worked with a team.


Teamwork multiplies your talent - John Maxwell



Today's recipe for success: TEAMWORK

Photo credit: Google.com


Best wishes
Jesam.