Food

Food is probably the most talked-about topic of conversation in the shamba and we look forward to lunch and dinner, prepared during the week by a Kikuyu woman named Nancy. She's an excellent cook and makes typical Swahili dishes like mondazi, a doughnut-like puff of goodness that you eat with beans. Our meals usually involve a starch: rice, pasta or mashed potatoes, a fried tortilla-like bread called chapati or, if we're lucky mondazi. And along with that starch comes something to put with it: beans, lentils, tomato sauce, cooked vegetables. It's all very good though unfortunately cooked with a lot of oil. There also is rarely meat and never any dairy involved, the food is practically vegan. We have a dish with canned tuna in it maybe once a week. Dairy is out of the question because with no electricity there is no refrigeration, though that doesn't prevent the use of eggs which are left sitting on a shelf. (Needless to say, I avoid the eggs whenever possible).
It was difficult to adjust at first to this new style of eating. There are usually only two dishes for a meal. It's so different to the variety of food that I put on my plate at home that I kept feeling like I was hungry or missing something, even though there was plenty of food. One day our dinner was mashed potatoes and steamed green beans and I couldn't help but think of the 10 other items that would be on my plate at a typical Thanksgiving. So the dishes are good, if a little monotonous and it's hard to grumble when so many people within a stone's throw have so much less to eat.
Three days a week we have dessert and dessert days are highly anticipated. We either get a cake made with flour yet somehow still a little gelatinous inside, or little round fried balls dipped in sugar (like donut holes) called "sweetballs", or a cake made of noodles and held together as if by magic. The desserts are typically flavored with cardamom and are very tasty.
Breakfast, for me anyway, involves a spoonful of peanut butter. I still haven't figured out how to toast bread in a skillet (no electricity=no toaster) and try not to eat many raw fruits and vegetables which are either washed in untreated tap water or not washed at all.
I'm becoming accustomed to the food situation here but it's still strange enough that I'm always feeling hungry and anticipating the next meal. Stranger even than our weekday fare is that any little trip of excursion on the weekend invariably includes an all-you-can-eat buffet, or in the case of last weekend, three of them. Everyone gets incredibly excited about the range and types of food available - meat!! Bread!! Real butter!! - that we gorge ourselves until we're sick and then start talking already about the next meal. I can't imagine what my poor digestive system must think encountering the same two dishes day in and day out for a week and then confronting the 20 or more different items I can fit in my stomach at the buffet.


Sweetballs