Cooking Up A Storm

Ahhh...food. Since my arrival to site, I have been a cooking fiend. I have been both experimenting and using the "When There Is No Microwave/Fridge" cookbook that was provided to me by the PC. Some of my favorite recipes are eggplant parmesan, chili, eggplant-lentil stew, and lemon pepper veggie pastａ....mmmｍｍｍ. I think they all turn out pretty well considering for the last couple of years I have survived on Ben and Jerry's and Chipotle. All three have been incredibly good to me. While my access to vegetables/fruits is quite limited, I have learned to make due. In my village market I can find tomatoes, onions, African eggplant, eggplant,oranges, rice, beans, and "scary meat" amongst a few other things. I can also find organic peanut butter---I eat this like it is my job. Imagine a person eating cheese whiz/whip cream from a spray bottle, but me, with peanut butter--minus the bottle. In the bigger market in neighboring Zabre, I can find a few more things like papaya(seasonal), bananas, green peppers/hot peppers, bread, lettuce, and cabbage but other than that everything is pretty limited. I am pretty excited that I am in the capital so that I can buy actual super-market(Marina market) items that I can bring back to site. Marina is the closest thing you will find to an actual super-market back home. The items at the market are super, super expensive but def. worth it. I am stocking up on baking supplies this weekend--when I get back to site I am doing to build a dutch oven so I can make banana bread, brownies, granola, and other wonderful yummies. Because I am just starting to learn how to cook, I really do not know how to gauge proportions. Hence, sometimes when I make something like eggplant, lentil stew, I make way too much. Therefore, I know that I will not be able to finish it before it spoils. Here, without a fridge, I am lucky if my left-overs last one day, one and-a-half days, max. So about once a week when I make way too much food I will usually share it with my host family. The first time that I shared with my family I made an eggplant and bean stew. So after lunch I brought out a heaping bowl of the stew, gave it to them, and they thanked me for it. Well since I eat (to) with my family every night, I thought that it was quite strange that for the first time since my arrival I was eating in one corner of the courtyard with my aunt and the rest of the family was huddled in another corner. I also thought it was rather odd that that night we had something different other than to(every night, we have the same to with the same sauce). In fact, I thought to myself, this food tastes oddly familiar. I was like this food has eggplant, it has beans, it has tomato paste. The only difference was that their food was more of a pate than a stew and it had piment (pepper). I could not really look at the food because I prefer to eat with my family by the light of the moon. Normally, we all eat together. Then it hit me, I was like, they did not just reject my stew, mash it up, put pepper in it, and try to give it back to me. It's like, I know I just started cooking but if I am living in the second poorest country in the world(second to Sudan), and if even they will not eat my food, what does that say about my cooking skills. I was beside myself. I ate in silence for the rest of the meal and felt kind of depressed about my cooking skills(or lack thereof), I did not stick around after dinner to converse with my family. As I was heading back to my courtyard, I thought I just had to know if they we were eating something different from what they had served me. So I took out my flashlight and peered into the bowls of food that my moms had prepared. And what was in these bowls? Eggplant and bean pate. I do not know what I was more relieved about...the fact that family was actually eating something nutritious(to has no nutritional value) or that they had not rejected my original bowl of stew. I would like to think that my great cooking skills inspired them to make something similar to my stew.