Eating Like Americans in Africa

Never have I used so much oil!  I was shocked when I saw our 3L bottle of oil was almost gone in less than a month.  I never used that much oil in a whole year when living in the States.  I still try not to use much oil, but Africans love to use oil.  I felt so sick to my stomach thinking about how our family had ingested all that oil in less than a month.  We asked our house helper to use less and now a 3L bottle of oil lasts about 2 months, but that still seems like a lot of oil (fat).  Somehow we aren’t gaining weight though, in fact Micah and I (mostly Micah) are losing weight.  It’s not just from sweating either.  Instead, it’s because we don’t have many processed foods or fast food at all.  We drink more purified water and eat a lot of fresh produce that hasn’t had a bunch of chemicals, oil, and sugars added to it.  So we can add as much fat and sugar as we like and are still consuming less than we did in the U.S.  As long as I don’t make too many cookies anyway.  Bad addiction.

I didn't have any pictures to add to this post, so I took some pictures of the food we have here.

In our fridge:  We have lots of drinks (mainly water), margarine, mayonnaise, yummy pork broth (from cooking a bunch of pork in our pressure cooker), leftovers, yogurt, watermelon, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, bananas, plantain, finger paint, hard boiled eggs (raw eggs we keep out of the fridge), chocolate!, butter, ketchup, mustard, parmesan cheese (from the States), homemade ranch dressing, play-doh, more beverages, and jelly.  Everything was purchased here except for the parmesan cheese, ziplock containers, and pitcher.

I’m still working on perfecting a variety of dishes to prepare for our family.  Most of our meals start with a salad or have some kind of vegetable and end with a fruit for dessert.  There are a few dishes my family sees often.  Having little kids, mac and cheese & hot dogs was the first perfected dish.  We can get many varieties of pasta and Laughing Cow cheese (“The Cow Who Laughs” is the reverse-translation from the French).  That’s pretty much the only kind of cheese; the local cheese just doesn't cut it for us Wisconsinites.  The hot dogs are imported and chicken based, but surprisingly pretty good—maybe that’s because they’re processed!  My spaghetti sauce from tomato paste isn’t the best yet, but we’re getting there.  I’ve been trying to use my Italian seasonings sparingly, since I don’t have a lot, nor can I buy more here.  I think our favorite dish so far is a made up Mexican rice dish.  Our house helper makes us a pot of beans in a tomato sauce each week and I make some rice and add some taco seasoning and laughing cow cheese and/or sour cream (old homemade yogurt).  The first time I tried mixing all these things, I could almost taste Chipotle Mexican Grill…almost!

In our little pantry:  Top left we have my "Pseudo-American" shelf of items which are mostly found here, except for some of my baking ingredients - cream of tartar, vanilla, and food coloring - along with the cheddar cheese & sour cream powders which came from the States.  Top right we have my African and American shelf: pasta, rice, corn meal, beans, milk powder, tomato paste, chicken bouillon, curry powder, bags, skewers, and matches.  Bottom left we have my all American shelf, the Coca-Cola and potatoes are from here though.  The Ziplock container is full of food from the States like Gatorade powder, pepperoni, pre-cooked bacon (well there once was), M&Ms and granola bars.  The bottom right is my all African shelf, ignames (yams) and in the back are our 2 African cooking pots and a grinding pot.

So after 5 months of living in Africa we are still finding new foods and trying new things, but we have thankfully found enough foods thus far to survive well!  A few other foods I’ve tried and we’ve all really liked, but just don’t make every week because of time and/or lack of ingredients, are pizza, cole slaw, cheeseburger soup, tortillas, cinnamon rolls, & pulled pork.

In our little freezer (someday we will get around to getting a solar chest freezer):  The bottom drawer has meat, cheese, and frozen water bottles.  The middle drawer has vegetables.  The top drawer has flour, sugar, coffee, milk powder, and FanIce (ice cream).

Foods we can’t get here that we ate a lot of in the states include good meat, bacon, pepperoni, ground beef, lunch meat, cheese (except Laughing Cow), broccoli, sweet corn, grapes, berries, strawberries, most seasonings, powdered sugar, good breakfast food, American chocolate (we have found a place with European chocolates though that are quite satisfying), chips (except for Pringles, oddly enough), real ice cream and custard.

It definitely helps that we have an excellent house helper that cooks 2 African dishes for us each week (which actually turns into 4 or more meals with leftovers).  She also comes early enough to make breakfast 3 times a week.  That only leaves 14 other meals I have to plan and prepare during the week.  I figured the other day, if we didn’t have a house helper who helped with the cooking, we would be going out to eat a couple times each week at least.  If we just went out one time a week, it would cost us more than we pay our house helper for an entire week.  Having a house helper actually saves us money in the long run.  And that’s even taking the cost of food into consideration.  She makes us African meals that don’t cost much at all, actually saving us even more money than if I was cooking a half local, half imported meal.

Perhaps in another post, I will touch on the African dishes which our house helper has made and is teaching me.