What do you eat over there?

One of the questions we are often asked is "what do you eat there?". I thought I would try to give you a glimpse of SOME of the things we typically eat...

AT HOME

I baked some loaves to have quick
 breakfasts handy - banana and apple -
bananas and apples are pretty much
available all year round - they are imported from
neighboring African countries

Admittedly only I eat this - pressure cooked boiled eggs
 with dried spicy pepper powder - eggs are locally available

Trying to be healthy by adding veggies -
but we have to wash our lettuce in diluted bleach!
(maybe that negates the healthy part?!)
Lettuce is locally grown and sold - washed in the Niger river before it goes to the market...hence the need for the bleach :p

Carrots - not bad right now but not always good and not always available.
When they are, they sometimes have
a taste...sometimes like chemicals or gasoline?! Likely
the taste is due to pesticides used when they are grown :(

PASTA - staple in our home - with tomato
sauce and cream sauce - ground beef is locally available
though many times my beef tastes like lamb?! Cream
sauce made with imported butter (from France) and powdered milk, I try to make the spaghetti sauce healthier by adding moringa leaves and veggies

Quesadillas - easy meal for me - I can buy these
tortillas frozen, add grated cheese (imported from
France and available locally) and this time I added some
turkey sausage that is also imported and locally available 

Peach Glazed Chicken - a recipe I received from an MK in our first 3 weeks in Niger - we have used it ever since!
The frozen chicken thighs are imported and this is a family favorite....thanks for the recipe Rebecca! (um...we use apricot jam for the sauce, not real peaches....) This is before they went in the oven. :)

Meat pie and green beans - I try to have at least 1 veggie at each dinner meal...sometimes, the veggie is canned corn! (But I was recently told corn is a grain, not a veggie...doh!) Pie crusts made with flour and locally available imported butter (no Crisco...but I have seen it for sale here before!)

PIZZA!! Again, you can buy cheese here...and we had no veggies so we had fruit salad - the fruit salad included apples, bananas, special treat: pears and plums! (I TOTALLY overpaid for the plums but we made sure we enjoyed them!)

All of this cooking is happening in our kitchen...which is likely hotter than this....this clock is in our dining area....needless to say, my sweat glands get LOTS of exercise! Oh, and this picture was taken 4-5 hours later than when I normally cook...so maybe a bit cooler at this point?! My friend refuses to look at the thermometer in her house. Maybe a habit I should learn?

KOREAN FOOD

Jasmine rice (long grain) is imported and readily available, however, usually full of bugs and needs to be rinsed quite a bit

I brought out some ingredients and try to cook Korean food once a week or so - here, I am using anchovies and sea kelp I brought from Canada to make a broth for some miso soup - the miso soup is actually made from my mom's soy bean paste that I use sparingly so it is not as strong as regular soy bean paste soup and tastes more like miso soup...without tofu 

Brought over some seaweed and made some rolls (kimbap) - used tuna in some and wieners, egg and carrots in others - missing something green but we have to make do with what we have!

Some other EASY meals for me include: pasta with mac & cheese powder that we brought over (Bulk Barn), instant noodles (my family LOVES these but they are from Nigeria and I cannot stand them - the Korean snob in me only likes eating Nongshim but it is no longer being imported...so sad)
and just plain pasta with salt and butter. I know. Such a great mom. I try to make lots for dinner so the kids end up with leftovers for lunch the next day. Or I make enough for a few meals and freeze it so those days where it is too hot to cook or we get home from the village and it is too late, I can pull out a freezer meal.

VILLAGE FOOD - very different from what we eat at home 

Here, we were offered fresh milk! (Um, we were told by our doctor not to drink it as it is not pasteurized and we can get botulism from it....we try to only take token sips...but we do try to abide by the missionary principle: "Lord, where you lead me, I will follow, what you feed me, I will swallow"...we don't want to offend people when they offer us food, but we don't want to get sick either!!)

Moringa leaves with millet - a bit dry and sometimes really sandy - this one was not too bad!

Sour milk - that freshly squeezed stuff above after it has sat in a hot hut for 3 days or so...NOT a favourite

REAL BUTTER - admittedly, have never bought this nor cooked with it, but it was at the village
market and thought I would take a picture....actually, it might be yogurt? The word is the same in Fulfulde for butter and yogurt, but I don't want to taste it to figure out which it is!

Feeling a bit like I just opened my closet and let people see how messy it is inside!! Maybe I WILL do that next post!! Stay tuned for "What kind of house do you live in?"....well, maybe not the next post, but I will post about it some time....