Food

We have been enjoying the food here.  For most Malawians, the menu is very much nsima, eggs, chicken, greens (leafy vegetables) also a sauce made from tomatoes and onions.  Sometimes fish, rice and meat are taken depending as one Malawian said “on income capacity”.  Bananas are plentiful therefore they eaten almost daily.  Most people grow vegetables in their gardens so peas, onions, carrots and potatoes can be found.  For many people rice is taken at Christmas to celebrate this special event.

For us, we notice that we have a much greater variety of foods in our daily diet at home in Scotland. We have also noticed that we drink a lot more tea and coffee than the Malawians.  At the priests' house we tended to have porridge and eggs for breakfast with coffee or tea. For lunch, nsima, greens and chicken then for dinner, fish (chambo) or meat, Irish potatoes, peas and carrots. Just now this is new to us but I wonder how we view this daily menu after a year or two. Compared with Scotland, Malawians do not appear to snack like we do.  Meal times are very leisurely with plenty of chat around the table.

 

 

 

When we first moved, we were very fortunate to be staying at the Priests' house so our food was prepared by the cooks.  For our housewarming I was very lucky to have James the cook demonstrating how to cook nsima which is maize flour and water.  You need to be patient, constantly stirring and beating it.  He also prepared a local chicken which would have been roaming around freely hours beforehand.  It is customary to offer chicken to guests as a sign of welcome.  Tobias the assistant cook prepared some meat and chips cooked in the chip pan.  I got shivers down my spine when I saw him lifting hot pans (no handles) with his bare hands.

Now that we are living in our own house we have to plan ahead and think about power cuts. It is not so easy just to pop out to the shops if you forget something. Cooking is very much slower here than at home.  I love the beans in a tomato sauce, but I am told they need to cook for 4 hours if you wish to produce a really nice dish.  Perhaps I'll get round to this in the near future but for now it is just too hot to think about the cooker being on this length of time. 

We have managed to cook a couple of meals on our electric cooker.  Thanks to the new Shoprite (South African Company) we have been able to buy some familiar foods to give a more varied diet.   Tom and I both love cheese.  It is very expensive here but we did make macaroni and cheese and we had toasted cheese with Heinz tomato sauce – delicious!