18th November
So not much has happened this weekend. England lost the
rugby and it’s still hot and sunny over here. Average daily temperature I would
estimate at 35.
So I have decided to tell you all a little about the food
over here, I don’t believe I have gone into it in any great depth.
On weekday evenings we have a man who cooks for us. Our
meals can vary but the usual dishes are beef and rice, chicken and rice,
chicken and chips and spaghetti bolognaise. The chicken is usually either
stewed in tomatoes or bbq outside and the beef is always stewed. Every meal and
I mean every meal is served with a side salad and usually a dish of cabbage or
peas. This menu is quite westernised except for the fact that everything is
cooked with about a litre of oil. Apparently it is a status thing. The richer
you are the more oil you would use and as we are white our cook seems to think
we would enjoy a lot of it. We are going to have a word with him. So that is
weekday evenings.
In work I am given lunch at that is a bit more Malawian. On
Tuesdays it’s chicken and rice, Wednesdays eggs and nsima (pronounced seema)
and Thursday is beef and nsima (pictured).
How to describe nsima. So the way it is made is a start.
Take maize and grind it into a flour. Take the flour and add water then boil in
into oblivion until you can only just stir it. It is bland, white and kind of
has the texture of play-dough. To be fair it is fairly inoffensive and with a
good sauce I don’t mind it.
At the weekends we fend for ourselves so this weekend Pam
and I cooked a roast for everyone – a bit of comfort food. Including Yorkshires!
On the drink side Carlsberg is everywhere due to having a
brewery here in Blantyre and is by far the most popular and cheapest drink.
Malawi Gin and Malawi Vodka are apparently not bad but I am not a fan so
couldn’t common. Lager is the only beer you can buy, there are no ales sadly.
But you can get more expensive European and South African imports.
There is a traditional drink here called Chibuku. This is
fermented maize that is served in a carton. It is also known as ‘Shake Shake’
as when you drink it you have to shake the carton to make sure all the lumpy
bits are mixed in. Hmmm how to describe shake shake. Imagine you have eaten a
bowl of cornflakes with way too much milk in it. Now imagine you’ve thrown that
up into a carton. Then left it in the sun all day. Then you drank it! Yep
that’s it. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m sure if you were brought up on the stuff
it would taste nice. But I wasn’t. So it doesn’t. Minging would aptly describe
it.
Stuff I have yet to try but are available over here are mice
on sticks and tiny little minnow type fishes that look urm interesting. Also here is a man with a sack of potatoes on his back! ( I still can't work out why the blog reverts photos to the way they were taken even though the photo file has them vertical. Any geeks who know please let me know!)
The goat curry I had in the first week of being here was
very nice.
As for take away food, there is no decent Chinese. The
Indian restaurants (2) are apparently really nice, as are the French and
Italian. We have only been to the Chinese. The take away pizza is also very
good. McDonalds has not made it to Blantyre, neither has Burger King. KFC has
but a meal will set you back 15 pounds. Yes you read that right 15 quid. As you
can imagine we have not had one of those either.
STATMAN
Number of pages views for the blog – 1669
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