Chunky, Firm, and Fried

La Maestra and Jael pounding sorghum

It is a far walk to the places where they sell bread and finding a rickshaw taxi is unreliable so "La Maestra" has started baking bread.  She is also hoping to be able to add non-white flour from sorghum to make it healthier.  That led her to experiment with grinding flour the other day.  The grinding machine in the market didn’t really grind it very finely at all, so she went the traditional route and learned how to pound the sorghum in big wooden mortar and pestles with the family of the guard here on the compound.  This worked better although very time consuming, and then together they made some traditional yogurt/sorghum porridge drink (fura), which was okay as far as chunky drinks go.  In our make-shift kitchen we’ve been doing a lot of bean soup with a nice squash they have, lentils and rice with leafy sauce, and sandwiches with peanut-butter made in our miniature food processor (hopefully the stores re-stock peanuts soon or we may have caused a shortage!).  Now we’ve been experimenting with some huge root / potato type things that look like a yam the size of a pineapple, but are white inside and have a consistency closer to the firmness of a turnip.  They make okay home-style fries but have a little bitter aftertaste, which is less when mashed.  A Delight has been excited that we have used some leaves from a tree she likes to play under and calls her own- it’s a Baobab tree and you can dry the leaves and cook them in things to have a pleasant spinach-like flavor.  The fruit available here is also somewhat different, we've had a few mid-sized watermelons, but have had to stick mostly with oranges and bananas.

Ingredients for tonight's sauce, even oil and spice are purchased everyday in plastic bags in quantities for a meal. You also see squash, spicy peppers, and unknown leaves...