Food, Glorious Food

Sometimes people have asked me what we eat when we live in Africa and for us, the answer is pretty much the same thing that we eat in the US. But it does take a while to figure out exactly what that means in each new place. We have the added challenge here that John and I have both changed our eating habits since we last lived together two and a half years ago so it will be a while longer before we completely figure things out. Read on for some photo highlights of food in Malawi.

This was the lunch I ordered when we were at the Lake - curry chicken. I think the rice and beans combo is pretty common here - although Malawians prefer nsima - basically a stiff porridge made out of white corn meal (called sadza in Zimbabwe).  We had a lunch at John's boss's house last Friday and Rodwell, our housekeeper did local dishes - nsima, beans (prepared with vegetables) and pumpkin greens with groundnut (peanut) flour. It was fun to finally have someone make local food in my kitchen - that was a first in all of our years in the foreign service.

I bought a crown pumpkin and asked Rodwell to prepare it - it's delicious.  It was a big pumpkin so we had it quite a few times - like this and then roasted in cubes. 

A family favorite from the time that we lived in Costa Rica. I have a big freezer so I'm trying to freeze up some mango because I think you can only find it in season. Plain yogurt that is similar to what we can get in the US is very hard to find but I did find it in a shop yesterday that I'm hoping will normally have it in stock.

A beautiful lunch salad - again thanks to Rodwell. I love eating salad but neither John nor I love making them. Avocados are also in season (but carrots are hard to find right now).

Happy to be back to our favorite brand of South African juice. You can find this in the US (they even had it at the shop at Carnegie Mellon University where Abigail goes to school) but it we get all the varieties here - including this new one.

Yes, this is fresh salmon (not previously frozen). There is a store that occasionally imports salmon - the sign said that it was caught last Tuesday in Norway. You had to buy the whole fish but there were two couples who wanted to split a whole one three way and we were standing at the counter looking at the packages of smoked salmon (since there was no way we were going to buy a whole salmon) and they asked if we were interested in joining them. I hadn't really intended on buying some but I must say it was delicious!! The best salmon I've had in a while - sold right here in Malawi.