Greater

One rainy April afternoon, my mother sought to brighten the day by cooking one of her favorite dishes: egusi soup. This soup, which is very popular in our homeland of Nigeria, is similar to other soups in that it has vegetables, water, and meats. However, there is one key ingredient that sets it apart from the rest: egusi seeds. These seeds rich in fat and protein come from a certain large melon native to West Africa, and after being dried and ground, they thicken the soup and create the most savory dish known to man. There was just one slight issue preventing my mother from being able to feast on the delicacy: the lack of a mortar and pestle. Without the mortar and pestle that she grew up using to grind such seeds, my mother struggled to make the soup to a thickness she prefers, as it was difficult for her to control how the blender was mashing the seeds. Moreover, the harsh sounds from the blender irritated my mother further, making her rainy day worse. Determined to not give up, my mother set out to buy a mortar and pestle, but unfortunately, they were quite hard to come by even in large stores such as Walmart and Target, and the mortars and pestles she did find were very uncomfortable to hold, loud, or very inefficient.

I created Greater, a mortar and pestle reminiscent to those in Nigeria, so that my mother can return to making food the way her family has for generations, but more efficiently.

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