Friday's meals

I had the most exciting discovery on Thursday when I went to get chicken feed, sugar, vegetables, a new mattress and bleach at Naivas, the local 'grocery store'. Sitting in the refrigerated section, jauntily peeking up at me... strawberries!! I hadn't seen strawberries in Kenya- I didn't even know they existed here! So exciting. I promptly bought 4 packages and toted them home.

This morning we had oatmeal with fresh strawberries. I added about a teaspoon of chia seeds (brought from the U.S.), cinnamon and a sprinkle of sugar. Delicious! I hope I can find the elusive strawberries again. In the mug is Kenyan chai tea. It's made by boiling about a teaspoon of chai mix/tea leaves with water and milk, then straining and adding sugar. It's not quite strong enough for me, but Nathan really likes it.

For lunch, I had leftovers from last night sans mushrooms. The Portuguese-Colombian Green Egg soup was just as good the next day!

Nathan had leftovers from Wednesday- I'd made a green curry with pumpkin and potato and lots of ginger and garlic, and today I threw in a chopped zucchini for extra veggies. I randomly added a poached egg and toast.

For dinner, we had our old standby, pad thai. I don't know if any Thai person would recognize our dish as pad thai, but our version is simple, delicious, and satisfying. For the sauce, I mix about a half cup of peanut butter, two tablespoons soy sauce, a tablespoon or two of tamarind paste, a sprinkling of chili pepper flakes, chopped garlic and ginger, and the juice of several limes. Then stir fry carrots, snow peas, and some sort of shredded green (though we were out tonight), bell pepper, scrambled egg chunks, and rice noodles, and top the whole mixture with the sauce. Stir. It's best with cilantro, but we didn't have any. I threw on cold diced cucumber for crunch (I detest bean sprouts and think cucumber is far better on top of pad thai) and some more chili flakes. So easy! So good!

In other news, we've booked an apartment in Mombasa for the first two weeks of November- I'll try to get some job hunting in on the coast. We're taking a train there- it's an overnight train, and I'm excited because it's on my life list to sleep on an overnight train. Yay! We've also found a Kiswahili teacher! She'll be coming 3 times a week to help us learn some conversational phrases, words for vegetables and fruits and animals, and count. It should be fun!

See you tomorrow.

A week in the lives of our stomachs.

Several of you have asked me what we do on a day-to-day basis. I wish I had some fascinating answer but our lives aren't that exciting. Yes, when we go on an adventure to the Mara and see hyenas and lions and elephants and leopards, it's pretty great, and we do fit in an occasional trip to Nairobi. But when we're home in Narok, there isn't much to tell. 

We get up at a comfortable hour, make chai tea with milk, check our email and catch up on news online for a while. Nathan works on-and-off throughout the day, usually fitting in a full day of computer/phone calls, in between regular household chores. We don't have a dishwasher or washing machine, so dishes and laundry are done by hand. (Usually we hire a lady to help with the laundry.) There are dogs to play with and feed, floors to sweep multiple times a day (it's dusty here!) and other assorted chores to do. We have a mid-morning breakfast, a later lunch, and usually a hearty and "fancy" dinner. Every other day or so we have errands to do in town, which we can usually do on foot. We've been getting better about exercizing- I'll go for a jog around the campus 'track' while Nathan kicks the soccer ball around. I do some reading, job-hunting and food projects throughout the day. After dinner we watch an episode or two of a TV show, read, and go to bed pretty early. 

Often in the middle of the night, we are woken up by either a nightclub or a screaming preacher, or both, and sometimes the mosque in town gets a little over-enthusiastic with the speaker system, and the muzzein call at 4:00 am wakes us up. 

So generally- not that exciting. However, I've been using the ample down-time to experiment with new 'recipes', creating some interesting new dishes. I've made mozzarella and ricotta cheese, perfected homemade pizza dough, made a lot of homemade pasta, hummus, smoothies, soups, sauces, pancakes,  muffins and more. Food is usually the most exciting part of my day. 

We'll be in Narok for the next week, so I thought it would be interesting to post pictures (apologies in advance, I'm not a talented photographer) of our meals. Maybe it will provide more insight to our day-to-day life?

Tonight, I had two bundles of sukuma wiki to use up before they wilted. Sukuma is, as far as we can tell, the same thing as collard greens. We usually buy it pre-shredded from our favorite vegetable lady, and then give it a quick saute with lemon, garlic and olive oil. It's my favorite vegetable here, and we eat it almost every night!

(Sukuma image from http://www.thedailygreen.com/healthy-eating/eat-safe/winter-farmers-market-recipes)

I wanted to mix it up a bit, so I did some googling and found a recipe for Portuguese Green Soup, and a recipe for Colombian Poached Egg Soup from my new favorite blog, Global Table Adventure. We don't have any spicy sausage (for the Portuguese soup), and I loved the concept of putting a poached egg in soup, so I sort of combined the recipes, creating Portuguese-Colombian Green Egg soup. It was pretty awesome! To replace the meaty/spiciness of the sausage, I fried sliced mushrooms in butter with some garlic, chili flakes and tarragon, and served the soup with a partially submerged poached egg, a sprinkling of mushrooms and ground pepper. I baked pumpkin bread for dipping. 

Unfortunately I remembered to take a picture only after Nathan finished most of his soup!

The soup: I sauteed onion and garlic in olive oil, then added a generous sprinkling of turmeric, ground pepper and red chili peppers. Once softened, I added organic chicken bouillon, two tomatoes, a zucchini, a carrot and 5 small potatoes (all loosely chopped) and water to cover. After about 15 minutes of simmering I added about 1.5 cups of low fat milk to add some creaminess. After another 15 minutes, I pureed the soup to a creamy thickened broth, then added about 4 cups of chopped sukuma (collard greens). After the greens were quite wilted, I pureed the mixture again, allowing the sukuma to retain some texture. 

To serve: Submerge a poached egg and sprinkle mushrooms on top.

And then we held a lion cub.

Corruption is Evil.

I'm sure you agree. Most Kenyans do. This sentiment is emblazoned on parking lot attendant's smocks, posted at government buildings, found on much official signage. Even the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) agrees:

I don't think we're too sure about that now. A few weeks ago, Nathan and I went to the Kenya Wildlife Service's Animal Orphanage. I think this is meant to be a recovery center for injured animals and their cubs. After paying the exorbitant entrance fee (around $15 for non-Kenyans, around $2 for Kenyans), we wandered around the grounds. There were a lot of cats- cheetahs, leopards, cervals and other wild kitties and assorted randoms: warthogs, a buffalo, some birds, an ostrich. It was the day Ramadan ended so the park was full of celebrating Muslim families decked out in finery, kids waving new plastic toy guns (which seems a strange post-Ramadan gift).

We were enjoying ourselves, admiring the playful cheetahs and the cheeky ostrich, when a man in a trenchcoat (with the KWS logo) sidled up to us and quietly enquired if we would like to hold a lion cub. Ummm, what kind of question is that?! Of course we would like to hold a lion cub! He informed us it was 1000 ksh, which is about $11. This was maybe our first hint this was not an above-board offer. Oh well. We met him about 30 minutes later by the ostrich pen, and he quickly herded us through the gate, around a few bushes and finally directed us into a small shed. Which contained caged rabbits. (Food for animals?) Trenchcoat man then disappeared.

At this point we are quite confident that this is not a legit lion-cub holding experience, but there we were. In the tiny shed. Awaiting a lion cub.

Several minutes later, two different men appear, one holding A LION CUB. I cannot over-state how stinking adorable he (?) was. The men hand him over (after showing Nathan how to hold his hind paws) and there we are. In a tiny, rabbit-filled shed. Holding a two-month-old lion cub. He smelled liony, his yawn was a little terrifying, and he was heavy and snuggly and beautiful.

We admired, we took a lot of pictures (the men kept urging us to take more), then paid the men, the lion was removed, and we were told to take the same route out. We re-emerged by the ostrich pen a little astounded at our luck and embarrassed at our collusion with the corruption*. But really? We held a lion cub. It was pretty awesome.

Yes, this is an entirely un-food-related post, buuuut.... it's a lion cub. And, in theory, we could be his food, someday, right?

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*Note: Yes. This was wrong of us. We got swept away with excitement and bewilderment. We do not advocate for holding wild animals without the explicit permission of the KWS. The lion cub probably would have been happier without being held.