Food

Food recently eaten and/or cooked:
Wheat bread. Baba ganoush. All bean chili. Lentils and macaroni and curry. Coffee with bread and olive oil. Breakfast barley. Cheese omelette with toast and Mom’s black-raspberry jam. Egg and tomato spiced and eaten with bread. Grilled cheese and tomato soup. Chocolate chip cookies with flax seeds and whole wheat flower.
I’m expanding my culinary enterprises! It’s fun, and delicious. The baba ganoush though, was a bit of an undertaking. First, make tahini from scratch (it’s pretty simple, just olive oil and sesame seeds) and then roast the eggplant and then throw it in the blender together with other ingredients and blend. Chill. Eat with delicious bread. I’m learning how to use a blender properly. Blenders were rarely used in the house when I was growing up, but I am quickly learning how useful they are, if used enthusiastically and properly. I never would have thought a blender could make tahini paste… but there you have it! They can.
I love making bread, but unlike my friend Adrienne, do not often rustle up the gumption to do it. But the thing is, if I want bread here, I a) buy the bland, dry, white store bread in my souk town and transport it back b) beg it from my neighbors or c) make it myself. So, inspired by Adrienne, guided by the bread book sent from home, and motivated by my desire for delicious wheat bread, I hope to be making bread far more frequently.
Chocolate chip cookies are delicious, and one of the things that seem to have more or less universal appeal. I have given them to many a Moroccan with great success. Other things have had less success, like zuccini bread and pumpkin bread. But chocolate chip cookies, no prob. J Which means I spend a fair amount of time chopping up bars of chocolate.
I found powdered tomato soup in Marjane! What is Marjane? Wal-mart. Wal-mart in Morocco. And thus in French and Arabic. I have spent far too much of my money there… as time goes by I find more and more products that I thought I could only get at Marjane elsewhere. Which is good! I’m glad to be supporting small business owners! It’s just a little more difficult to unearth things in tHanuts sometimes. THanuts tend to be all higgledy-piggledly in organization. Well, to the casual observer that is. I’m sure the storeowners would say otherwise. The powdered tomato soup, though… that’s gonna be hard to find elsewhere. I guess I’ll just have to use it sparingly. But for the occasional lunch of grilled cheese and tomato soup, I may just be willing to go to Marjane. Wal-mart. Sigh. Globalization is evident everywhere you go… I remember watching a Target go up in the 5 months I was in Dar es Salaam… and just recently I realized that one of the reasons the herders here have such large herds of goats and sheep is that they can sell them to city folk at a good price for the annual feasts. On the other hand, I just bought the most delicious eggs from my neighbor. There’s an interesting mix of local and decidedly not local food in my kitchen. I know which one is easier on my conscience, though.

Ps: the other thing i recently ate for the first time was... alfalfa! Yup, that's right, cow food. Carefully chopped, steamed, spiced and oiled, it was, in fact, delicious. I am only wondering, can it possibly have had any nutritional goodness in it??