The little shops here have a pretty good assortment of packaged foods, mostly from Saudi Arabia or India. You can get packaged cookies (biscuits), unrefrigerated local brown eggs, rice, noodles and pasta, maize or wheat flour, ultra-pasteurized milk in boxes, sauces, spices, curries, juices, cooking oil, margarine, soap, detergent and shampoo. A few of the shops have luxuries like powdered Cadbury “drinking chocolate,” packaged cake mixes, refrigerated cultured milk or yogurt, butter, and cheese.
The fruits and vegetable are pretty much the same everywhere you go, so you have to eat and cook with what’s in season (which is probably better anyway).
Fruits: tiny fingerling yellow bananas, papaya, watermelon, apples, oranges (green-looking but sweet).
Vegetables: small red potatoes, small purple onions, plum tomatoes, carrots (large, but rather soft), purple eggplant, green bell peppers, taro root, cucumber, bunches of greens kind of like big spinach, gigantic avocado.
Given that list, what would you make?
This evening we had some folks over to dinner, and I made a salad of tomato, cucumber and red onion; scalloped potatoes, Chinese fried rice, and rice and beans. One of the guests brought an avocado, which here is like the cheapest and most low-status vegetable there is. He said that the seller told him scornfully that only ants and monkeys eat them. It was gigantic, delicious and bruise-free, it was almost as big as Halle’s head. Wow!
Photo: the kids harvesting the beans in the front yard; our house mama gave us some since the kids helped pick and we cooked them tonight for dinner.
The fruits and vegetable are pretty much the same everywhere you go, so you have to eat and cook with what’s in season (which is probably better anyway).
Fruits: tiny fingerling yellow bananas, papaya, watermelon, apples, oranges (green-looking but sweet).
Vegetables: small red potatoes, small purple onions, plum tomatoes, carrots (large, but rather soft), purple eggplant, green bell peppers, taro root, cucumber, bunches of greens kind of like big spinach, gigantic avocado.
Given that list, what would you make?
This evening we had some folks over to dinner, and I made a salad of tomato, cucumber and red onion; scalloped potatoes, Chinese fried rice, and rice and beans. One of the guests brought an avocado, which here is like the cheapest and most low-status vegetable there is. He said that the seller told him scornfully that only ants and monkeys eat them. It was gigantic, delicious and bruise-free, it was almost as big as Halle’s head. Wow!
Photo: the kids harvesting the beans in the front yard; our house mama gave us some since the kids helped pick and we cooked them tonight for dinner.
This is incredible- My name is Angela Hughes I am in the Bedford, NH ward. My daughter knows your son from the stake dances. She told me you guys were over in Africa. We travel all over the world with our kids and my in laws run the neo natal missions for the LDS church, so I was interested in reading your blog- Hope you don't mind that I have bookmarked and will follow. Very inspiring! Let's meet up one day- I am sure we would have lots to talk about! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteJust curious, do you ever see people buying or consuming spoiled milk? I saw this all the time in South Africa. I wonder if it is just a regional custom. They called it 'maas'.
ReplyDeleteHmm...yeah, I think a lot of salads and noodle or rice dishes would be happening. I love avocados so much, they are like a treat to me, funny about the seller's comment. Keep us posted on what you make to eat. I don't know if I've ever had fresh papaya, I should try some, but I would be gobbling up the watermelon for every meal and the green oranges sound fascinating. Are you still eating cereal out of one bowl, in turn, for breakfast?
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