Some of us have our great grand mother’s recipe. This is the time to let others know how good your family is in Great African dishes. Yams, plantains, green bananas and cassava are the essential staples in Africa. These vegetables are grown and used all over the continent, either on their own or combined with others. Meat, on the other hand, is often used merely as one of a number of flavorings, rather than as a main ingredient in cooking. Vegetables, beans and lentils are definitely the most popular food staples throughout the continent, although animal products are used whenever available. Staples as Ingredients in Cooking Historically, the African taste and use of ingredients has changed a great deal. Before intercontinental trade started at a wide scale, the most important vegetable food staples were rice, sorghum, millet, barley and lentils. In the eastern part of the continent (especially in Kenya) Arabs did start the cosmopolitan trend in local cuisine, sailing in their dried fruits, rice, spices and expanding the diets of the coastal cal gardeners. They also brought oranges, lemons and limes from China and India, as well as domestic pigs. The British were the next to influence eating and drinking habits, importing new breeds of sheep, goats and cattle, together with strawberries and asparagus. They also planted high-quality coffee. In general European explorers and traders introduced several important food staples to the continent, after their first journeys to America and Asia. Important staples, which had been cultivated by the Indian cultures of the Americas, found their way to the "old continents". Beans, cassava, groundnuts, maize, tomatoes and sweet potatoes thus were introduced to Africa as a direct cause of the European exploring of the American continent. Asian seasonings like pepper, cinnamon, clove, curry and nutmeg were introduced as well. Today the principal food crops in the western part of the continent are cereals; millet, sorghum, rice and maize. Root crops such as manioc, cocoyams, sweet potato and yams are also important locally. Perennial cash crops include both groundnuts and soybeans.