Food glorious food!

"What have you been eating?” I hear you ask

When eating out it’s been pretty much what I’d eat if I were in London. There’s a very popular restaurant called Mama Mia’s which you won’t be surprised to  learn serves Italian food, I’ve been to a couple of Indian restaurants and a Mexican style restaurant.

At home I’ve also pretty much stuck to my usual – pasta, chicken, mince in a variety of disguises, tuna, lots of tomatoes. The steak however thin and well cooked is like shoe leather so I’m going to give that a miss from now on. The lettuce doesn’t look too appealing and I’m not a great fan anyway. I’ve tried baby marrow this week which was lovely roasted in the oven and I’ve taken to butternut squash. I’ve eaten fish when I’ve been out but am not too keen on how it looks in the freezer at the supermarket so I’ve given that a wide berth for now. My other fear is that with power cuts, the freezers start to defrost and then the food is refrozen only to partially defrost at the next power outage. I can see myself joining the veggie gang with chicken and tinned fish thrown in!

What am I missing?

•             Mushrooms which are one of my food heavens. I’ve only seen/bought  South African imports which while they are delicious, are another one of those things which are expensive MWK 1900 = £4
•       Chocolate – this is self enforced! I have emergency Maltesers with me as well as two slabs of  Rittersport bought at Nairobi airport. As yet, I’ve not felt the need to break into these emergency rations. Let’s see if they last until their use by date!

What is in the shops varies from week to week and from shop to shop. So rather than scooting round in half an hour, it takes me a couple of hours to find everything I need. I’m  learning what each of the shops stocks. I was surprised today as one of the shops was selling swimming pool cleaning fluids, not something your average Malawian needs to worry about.  At the moment shopping ritual keeps me busy on a Saturday. Last week there was no Lurpack so I settled for some, you’ve guessed it, South African butter. Hum! That will be used for cooking now as my lovely Lurpack was in the shops today but there were no bananas. 

The best piece of advice I’ve been given is “go with the idea you need something for your dinner, not I’m going to cook a (specific thing) tonight”. It’s been useful advice especially as I tend to go shopping in the afternoon when it’s cooler and less busy, and therefore easier to park, but this does sometimes mean things may have sold out, if they were there at all that day. Have you ever known the supermarket to run out of yoghurts by 3.30pm on a Saturday?

So, this little update on prices and availability brings me neatly on to challenge number one!