Letter 39 – Cooking

Food

Dear A

I have been thinking about a common topic and how it has affected us and changed us. The food.

When we first arrived, we enjoyed going to a number of ethnic restaurants and preparing food that I would call typical for us as Americans. Then we spent a week at the catholic retreat center for language school and we were served rice twice a day (lunch and dinner). Breakfast was usually oatmeal or something similar. That was difficult. So much rice and the sauce they put on it was not very appealing in its appearance. Even the jollof rice, a type of fried rice, was a challenge, even though it looked great and tasted pretty good, was a challenge to eat. A

Then we returned to the rest center and headed up country. For a few days more we enjoyed a typical menu for our meals. When we finally arrived in Gbendembu, a new menu began to develop. It was necessary because the cost for our type of food was just too high and it was not available. If we wanted to buy those supplies, we would have to drive five hours to Freetown to find a store and be willing to pay as much as 3-4 times what they cost in the US.

So, it was time to make a shift to a rice-based diet. At first, I struggled the most with this. Perry and the boys seemed to have no problem and enjoyed the food. The good news is that we found a great substitute for the very expensive boxed cereals. We discovered that Alimamy, our cook, knew how to make granola and that all of the supplies were readily available and quite inexpensive. So most days consisted of granola for breakfast (sometimes pancakes or egg). For Lunch, we would have rice chop, except on Sundays when Alimamy was not working. Rice chop would generally be rice with one of several types of sauces or toppings. Sauces include Petete leaf (leaves from a type of local potato chopped really fine), Casada leaf (leaf from the cassava plant chopped really fine), and granat soup (made from peanuts). These all involve the following ingredients: tomato paste, magi cubes, salt, palm oil, some type of meat, and a very strong red pepper (it took some time for me to get used to this, but Perry loves it). Sometimes they make a sauce from Kunsho beans. These are somewhat like split peas and taste great when prepared as a sauce.

Besides this, there are meals made from casada and the local potato.

We have tried some interesting types of meat. We have access to the usual meats such as beef and chicken. Sometimes we get pork, but it is not readily available. Then there are the other somewhat common meats such as monkey and deer. However, there are some meats that have taken a little getting used to Not because they taste bad, but because we don’t think of them as meat. These include ground pig, cutting grass (which is a large wild rat), iguana, boa constrictor, wild cat, and many other animals. Smoked fish is also available but much of it is so bony that we don’t buy it. Yet, when it is larger and not quite as boney, it is quite tasty.

Because these are not available every day, we buy as much as possible when it is in the market or a hunter comes buy and is selling some of his catch. Then we grind some and cut the rest into cubes and can it. If you don’t do this, you almost can’t chew it.

There are other special foods like the jalof rice and another sauce called krenkren but they require special things to make and are usually only made for special occasions.

At first it was a challenge to eat rice every day but now, if we don’t have rice during the day if seems like something is missing. Also, the sauces that looked so unappealing at first, now taste great. We don’t even notice the appearance, because we know it will taste good. Our favorite though is the granat soup.

That brings us to supper. Here we caved in and tried to prepare foods that we were used to. But again, we had to be selective because of cost and availability of those items. Perry learned to make pizza and came up with reasonable substitutes for the spices, cheese and meat. We would have spaghetti, mac and cheese (A did an incredible job with this and we used those Vienna sausages for this) and so on. We also discovered a local meat sandwich or stuffed bread that became part of the evening menu. And we learned that the local potato, when cut and fried, were an excellent substitute for French fries.

I could go on with how our diet has changed and how we have come to enjoy and almost prefer local foods, but this is enough so you can understand why we only look for certain types of food, canned hams and canned vegetables so we can have a somewhat balanced diet for our growing boys. The only fresh vegetables are what we manage to grow in our garden, which include a few tomatoes, cucumbers, and the like.

I am beginning to wonder if the shift in our diet has helped us overcome the problem we had the first year with boils. I will write about that in another letter. But we all are doing well and are healthy. Perry, who has struggled more than any of us, is finally feeling better most of the time.

As a result of all of this, I am putting together a cookbook based on the foods available here. My friend J is helping me with this. She has a come up with a lot of different recipes over the years.

On a final note, there is no pre-packaged food here. You have to make everything from scratch. Some of these meals take hours to prepare. Because of this, I am so thankful to have A as our cook and my teacher.

From my kitchen to yours,

Nancy

When we leave our culture for another it is pretty certain there will be different foods and different ways to find the ingredients and do the cooking. How will you respond to the changes? Will you be willing to make those foods part of your menu and learn to prepare them? Or have others prepare them if possible, given that the cost of a cook is reasonable? Will you look for sources of local foods, restaurants, markets, and street vendors so you can try the local food and find the ingredients? How will you deal with the possibility that you don’t like a particular food and it happens to be one of the most common dishes that you will be serve