Eating

Want to help me with ideas?  I've got a few good meals that I've been making, but I've been having a hard time thinking of different dishes.  The internet is too slow for it to be worthwhile to search for recipies.  If you have an idea that would work (a recipie or a simple "this and this with that on top") I would love it if you emailed or PM-ed me with it!  Meanwhile, you might be interested in what we have to eat.

There are a number of different shopping options around. Shopping here includes a new and vital factor: carrying all the groceries for the walk home!  So the farther afeild I wander, the better the prices and variety are, but the farther I have to take the groceries.  It also means that "stocking up" on anything is impractical.

Just a few minutes walk from our house is a little market area, with a bunch of small stalls, a grocery store with about 5 aisles, and a large fruit, vegetable, and fish market.  If we walk the other direction down our road, we come to a much larger grocery store, which has a number of more normal things (such as spices and cheese), but it about 20 minutes' walk away.  If we take the minibus 30 minutes to the biggest shopping area on Ggaba Road, Kabalagala, we can find a grocery store that is comparable to a small American grocery, with deli meats and herbal tea.  I assume there are stores in downtown Kampala that are even better, but the complication of getting in and out of downtown is not worth grocery shopping.  

We have most kinds of vegetables that you can imagine (very cheaply!) including potatoes ("Irish"), swiss chard, cabbage, tomatoes, eggplant, etc.  The only mushrooms are small dried ones used for flavoring sauces.  There are different kinds of rice (all white) and a very wide variety of beans, lentils, and dried peas.  The locals also eat "posho," which is a cornmeal dish pretty much like poleta or grits, and "matoke" bananas as a starch under their sauces.  So there are lots of vegetables, beans, and carbohydrates.  There are also flours, baking soda, etc.  Some noodles, although not at the nearby stores.  

I will get fish, but not meat.  Plenty is available, but I don't trust the butcheries with the meat hanging out in the air -- not to mention, whenever I've been served meat it's very tough anyway.  Chicken would be much more sanitary, but more work.  The way to buy chicken for dinner here is to pick a nice bird out of the cages piled up at the edge of the market, and then bring him home by the feet or the wings!  I know exactly how much trouble it is to prepare a chicken from beginning to end, and I don't feel like embarking on that project on a whim!  I think frozen chicken parts are available from the distant groceries, but that gets heavy and expensive.  Probably worth it for a treat, but not regularly.  

As for herbs and spices, we have available all of the normal ones like dried basil, paprika, rosemary, etc.  The groceries also have every Indian spice you can think of, but I don't really know how to use!  The locals seem to use mostly tiny dried fish, dried mushrooms, Royco (a powdered gravy type thing), and hot peppers.  Or nothing at all.  

As for nuts, only peanuts.  (There are some exorbitantly expensive cashews available as well, but I'm not buying them!)  No dried fruit.  No nice oils or vinegars.  Almost nothing for sauces, just strange African ketchup.   No soy sauce or salsa or nutritional yeast or hummus or anything. 

Milk is availble, in small shelf-stable boxes.  Super-sweet yougurt is available in small tubs, and I can get some plain yogurt at the medium-far grocery.  For cheese, I can get fairly expensive wheels of gouda, or extraordinarily expensive small bits of a few other cheeses.  

So what can you think of that I can make with those things?  I hadn't realized how much I depend on condiments, nuts, and cheeses until I don't have any!