Yes, that is a spatula shaped burn on my leg.

The number one question we are asked by friends and family at home is what do you eat. This is a funny question to us because really we eat very boring foods and often the same thing again and again. It’s not as exotic as you are thinking, I promise. That said, we have eaten some strange things or at least tried them, but they aren’t on our everyday diet.

So, here I am with our list of weird things we have eaten and our list of ordinary things that we eat and maybe a little insight as to how everyday cooking goes down.

First, my kitchen is outside. We literally live in three rooms and none of them are food designated areas. We do have a great hut that we use for our school area and dining area. So eating is done off the ground. I do not have my children eating in the dirt, promise.

We have a small two burner gas stove top, like you use when you are camping. It is really handy for quick heat ups like boiling water, etc. But we mostly rely on our coal pots. They are metal containers with a clay inside that we put charcoal into and cook over an open fire. Our life has best been described as an extended camping trip. I think this especially applies to cooking time. I like to bake, so we devised a way to use a big pot that we bought here to bake certain items. First, let me say these giant aluminum pots are melted down engine blocks….got that mental picture? I fill the coal pot and light it, then when it is good and hot, I put the item to be baked into the giant pot and put some of the hot coals on the inverted lid. It kind of has a dutch oven effect. Now, there is no temperature control so a timer isn’t really reliable. I have to work off smell here and pray that the smell isn’t of burning food!

We bake chicken or fry chicken, we can even make pizza and breads. We can sometimes get potatoes and we love to bake those or fry them up. We can’t get vegetables very often except for the local potato leaf or cassava leaf. These have to be cooked, they aren’t like salads. They aren’t bad but you can only eat them so many times a week. I try to buy a large amount of carrots and green beans when we go to Freetown and I steam them and freeze them for use throughout the month. So, with limited ingredients, we have become quite creative!

A few days per week we eat local dishes. They are not bad, just repetitive. Every dish contains onion, tomato paste, local hot peppers, oil and some leaf or vegetable all served over rice. Our favorites include blackeyed bench (blackeyed peas cooked with all the above ingredients). We also love groundnut soup (peanuts ground super fine with above ingredients added) and we like punky stew (pumpkin with…you get the picture, right?). We like these but only so much!

We eat 2 meals per day because, well, can you imagine firing up a coal pot everytime you want a snack? We have oatmeal 5 mornings a week and Saturday and Sunday we live it up with pancakes and the big treat of bacon and eggs. I am hungry on this Monday morning just thinking about it! We eat whatever fruit is in season around lunchtime for a snack then have an earlier dinner. Yes, we have all thinned out, but we aren’t hungry as much during the day either because we are just so busy. I am starting to question the validity of the five meals a day being best. Africa: the ultimate diet!

We can’t get bread here very easily. So we may have it a few times per month. We also longingly remember milk, a commodity completely unavailable here. So pop open that red or blue top for us tonight. We plan to drink it by the gallons when our feet hit the ground! Cheese is expensive here, we enjoy each bite. Cereal isn’t something we get very often because at $10.00 a box…who could buy cereal? Crazy, right?

I really love good food. It is something I think about and dream about. It has been kind of fun coming up with new recipes that require minimum ingredients and also interesting to use ingredients I never really found or used in the states. Curry is a fun new favorite as well as eggplant in everything, lentils in a lot of things and the use of frozen peas as a good filler. That said, if you have any ideas leave a recipe! We would love to add to our repertoire!

Now, weird things we have eaten…

We have purchased and butchered ourselves a couple of goats now. I really like goat meat. But I have a new appreciation for the phrase “tough old goat”, it’s not a compliment, at all! Goat, isn’t that strange but I’m easing you into this.

We have also purchased and butchered in our backyard a couple of pigs. Our favorite experience in this is when our Christian friend Mohamed and our Muslim friend Moses killed and gutted one on an old door in the backyard. Think about it, you will see the irony there.

We had a really nice pepper soup with porcupine one night. We purchased a giant porcupine like you see at the zoo and ate it. Not too bad but a little chewy. And I was a bit freaked out when someone cut off it’s tail to let the baby use it as a rattle. Too far, too far.

We have had several Freetown Bo’s for dinner and this is our favorite bushmeat by far. However, sad, cause they are cute little tiny dear.

We did it. We have eaten monkey. Sorry. It was good…real good. Then someone handed me a piece of meat and I put it’s little cooked hand in my mouth and now I have sworn off monkey eating. Those little faces and hands are too much! But, it was good.

Pumba, was also delicious. For those who do not understand my Disney reference, a little warthog is a good thing.

Giant snail. This I am not sure I would recommend, but you should try everything once, right?

Number one, hands down, strange thing we have eaten…termites. A little like nutty popcorn, we like them. But you have to get over the fact that there is a bug in your mouth.

We still have a few things on our “to try” list but we are working our way through! I think giant rat and snake are still to be consumed. Not sure those are going to be for me! The kids are total troopers and try everything. We’ve been totally surprised by what we have liked and they can say they have eaten these cool things! They, as I have said before, are pretty much the coolest.

So, to all those grandparents, aunts and uncles who are concerned about our food intake, as you can see we are surviving just fine. Our diets are different but we are pretty good about taking our vitamins to make up for any lost nutrition. And overall, I would say we have gained a lot in the way of cutting out processed or nonessentials in our diets. That said, feel free to send chocolate. I could really go for a reeses!!