Hi Friends, greetings from the PC office. Here I can get the finest air conditioning, drinkable water and unlimted internet this country has to offer. ALSO THIS IS WHERE MY MAIL COMES. Today I had packages waiting for me. Stickers! ((It's shamless what my students will do for a sticker. One kid even offered to carry 20 L of water for me if I'd give him one.)) Toys and markers for Vito and friends! MAC & CHEESE. And wait just when you thought it couldn't get any better.........SNICKERS.
OMG. (or OMD in Portuguese) I caaaan't even handle how happy the thought of macaroni & cheese for dinner and snickers for breakfast every day is making me.
But on with the show.
I've been having a hard time feeding myself--which is to say that I'm too lazy to cook in a country where EVERYTHING has to be made from scratch. There are absolutely no processed foods here. I don't eat anything that comes from a can or a box. Ok, that's an exaggeration. I can get pasta, peanut butter, milk and tuna-fish at the Red Store, but everything else I eat is sold by litle old ladies who sit on straw mats in the dusty market. The market is a bit overwhelming. There are probably 30 venders at the market and it seems to me that they all sell the same things. I've been trying to make friends with a few of them so that they don't sell me bad things or over charge me. I'm sure there are many unwritten rules of engagement that I don't know yet.
Last week I decided that I was awfully tired of eating gross overcooked pasta and mushy beans. In the evenings I often hang out on the back porch and watch Filemena (my neighbor, Vito's 17 year old aunt) cook. She offered to teach me how to make Xima. So I said: Challenge Accepted. I hadn't eaten anything filling or decently cooked for about a month. I asked her if she'd help me make Mboa (pumpkin leaves) with coconut milk and peanut flour to go with the Xima. She said: Challenge Accepted
I went to the market on Saturday morning. I bought a coconut, some mboa, some peanuts and a bag of corn-flour (to make Xima) at the Red Store. I was pretty proud of myself. I was going to cook Mozambican food! Yeah!
I showed Filemena and Zulfa (Sergio's 20 year old sister) my purchases. They were not impressed. Somehow I managed to buy the wrong peanuts and the mboa wasn't fresh. The xima-flour was dirty. They shook their heads and I realized that I couldn't even manage to shop correctly in this country. They told me that next time I wanted to go buy things in the market I needed to invite them so they could help me.
They asked me if I knew how to cook and I said Yes. I have pilar'd and relar'd and cortar'd before. I can handle this you guys...
So we started cooking. I dropped the peanuts in the pilao and began smashing them with the big stick. Zulfa took the stick after about 10 seconds and made quick work of the peanuts. Then, I washed, removed the spiky parts of the Mboa and began cutting it. (Or, I dumped the pumpkin leaves in a bucket of water and started ripping them into tiny peices while trying to remove the veins before Zulfa told me I was doing it wrong and finished it for me while I sat and watched sheepishly). And then I remembered an important lesson from training: that even though I'm a very capable Adult in the US I'm basically a helpless baby who can't even buy peanuts correctly here in Mozambique.
Then I took a nap on the back porch while Filemena washed her clothes.
Then I grated a coconut. This was the only thing I did satisfactorily (though Rute, Sergio's wife, had to remind me to hold the coconut with 2 hands....)
When all the ingredents were ready Zulfa cooked my dinner for me while I watched and tried to follow along.
It only took 6 hours to prepare from start to finish. And it was the best meal I've had for....months. Life moves slower here in Mozambique.
Zulfa told me that there's a place in the market that sells frozen chicken parts (that means, I can eat meat without having to kill it first!) I'm going to attempt to cook some chicken over my carvao stove sometime this week.
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