Time Spent with Food

A lot of the common staples in this picture of sauce,
 porridge, peanuts, and the Johnny Appleseed song.

We want to live as close to the local lifestyle as is realistic for us. But slowly we have been realizing that in order for us to mentally/emotionally/physically stay here long term, we need to make some reasonable provisions for making our home feel more like home. We have found food preparation is an important way to help our family feel at home.

Some days I wonder where my time goes, but here is one example of how simple daily living here takes so much time. Although we don't grow most of our food, we do spend a lot more time preparing our food from the “raw” material we can buy here.

In both the States and here, we make our own yogurt, hummus, pancakes, refried beans, pizza crust and peanut butter on a regular basis. Often I had homemade bread made in the bread maker around. Yogurt is in some ways easier here because it is so warm! But I have made enough batches sour by forgetting them too!

In addition we grind corn flour, sorghum flour (clean and sort, dry, grind, dry these flours), make granola (can't find a stable cereal source, so I make my 'grapenuts' cereal base), red sauces (spaghetti and pizza), bread, cream cheese, ricotta cheese, tomato soup, cream of mushroom soup (very convenient to use in recipes in place of canned soups, which are unavailable here), cake, salsa, tapioca, tortillas, milkshakes, popsicles, dog food, and chicken food supplement. I have found the cream items to be most helpful recently because our closest cheese to buy is a three day shopping trip.

Cleaning things for baking or cooking is the most time consuming and biggest difference from the US, as nothing here comes ready to eat. We prepare milk (either powdered or pasteurizing and straining), sorghum, millet, dried corn, ground beef (this process is such a pain, I have almost given up on it completely!), coconut (cracking and shredding by hand), papaya, beans (soak for a while to let all the bugs float, really probably 70 bugs per cup and a half of beans! - wish I had a picture of this), toast and popcorn on the stovetop, white flour (may need to sift out the bugs), rice, sugar, water for drinking and yogurt... really any item could go here because not much comes clean enough for eating.

Sorghum grains in the middle of the
cleaning/drying process

For example, I took time to pick some of the dirt out of our sugar this week, yet there is always still more dirt (This might be explained by the time I was at the market stall and the sugar bag was dropped, split open and the now mixed sugar and sand was put back in the bag!)… So once picking out dirt has consumed enough of my time, we eat the rest.

The easiest snack is peanuts, as we have found someone who prepares them for us (although chew gently, as there still are 3-4 hidden peanut colored stones in each 750mg bottle). We also love getting carrots, and green peppers from the market to snack on. When carrots are in season, they are a great snack, but when not in season, they are as big as your pinky finger and a lot of work!

A favorite snack is yogurt popsicles, yogurt mixed with granola and homemade ice milkshakes! We have also made hummus for snacks and this one surprisingly we have to buy the chickpeas in a can, unless we buy dry chickpeas ahead from the capital! All we have found to dip in it though are carrots, green peppers and bread. That is when I miss pretzels.

The small things that build up: preparing ice water in our thermos twice a day and slicing every piece of bread eaten by our family. Electrolyte drink for dehydration in the heat and during sickness is another small thing to make. We have made hibiscus tea and lime drink from the limes growing on our tree in the front yard, but I can't seem to keep up on these regularly.

In the future I would like to get into making more cheese type items, although it is so dusty that I am pretty sure our cheese would get full of sand during the process. And I would also like to make graham crackers for my husband who has been known to eat so many that he has decorated his walls with the boxes. I also hope to make some mayonnaise soon too, as my family isn't a huge fan of store bought mayo, which actually is available here.

After writing this post, I feel I have a better understanding of where the time in my day goes. Between homeschooling, preparing foods, cleaning dust, visiting and learning language, as I think is universal in many cultures, the day is quickly gone.

-- La Maestra