Banana Bread, Coffee and... Corn on the Cob?

　
　Friday was the day I finally moved out of my bosses house and into my new place. Consequently, Friday was also the day I had to start taking responsibility for feeding myself! Eeeek!

Here are a few of my favourite food memories from the weekend:

#1 Going to a friend’s house for a delicious and refreshing backyard supper! Yum. (Do you like how this list started with someone ELSE doing the cooking??)

#2 Finding coffee in Uliwa!! Yayyeeeee!!!
Wait.
Is it instant?
Nope.
Do we have a coffee maker, French press, or other coffee making implement?
Nope.
Buying it anyways?
Yup!

Which lead to me waking up this lovely Sunday morning, DETERMINED to enjoy a steaming cup of coffee on the konde.
So, in case you ever find yourself in this situation, here is a recipe for making coffee without the pot:


Step 1: scour the kitchen for any tools you feel may come in handy (an imagination is extremely useful in this scenario…). My work table looked like this:

-Coffee grounds
-Mug
-Saucer
-glass juice pitcher
-golf-ball-shaped clamp/sieve looking thingy

Step 2: Heap coffee grounds directly into mug.

Step 3: Boil water in kettle or on stove top. Pour into mug and cover with a saucer.

Step 4: Let steam 5-10 min.

Step 5: Pour all contents of mug into glass juice pitcher.

Step 6: Rinse mug, and pour coffee back in, filtering it through golf-ball-shaped clamp/sieve thingy.

Step 7: Add a bit of milk and sugar, take to the konde, open a good book,

ENJOY!

#3 Corn on the Cob
Ok, so for the last couple days we have had these delicious looking corn on the cobs sitting in the kitchen. So today, roomie suggested we grill them for dinner! Yummmmm…..
Here was our method for making them 'edible':

1. Turn on oven. Peel corn and place on rack with husks hanging outside and door left open.

2. Play with children for approximately 45min while it cooks.

3. Hmmm…. Not quite done…. Ok, turn off oven and go for a walk. Return home and put oven back on.

4. 30 min later… this doesn’t seem to be working… the kernels are still hard! (Also looking kind of shrivelled and reddish…).

Hmmm… well…. Mom sometimes boils them…. Let’s try that! (This was my brilliant contribution…)

5. Take a shower…. 10 min later… Still quite hard… Well…. I think Mom told me once that they had to cook for, like, 20 min? Let’s leave it on a bit longer….

6. 10 min later… Wow… this corn is really quite crunchy… Do you think we overcooked it??

Is this even how you cook corn on the cob?
Wait, IS this even corn on the cob???


I guess we will never know…. We just smothered it in butter and salt and ate it anyways! Kind of tasted like burnt popcorn kernels! Yum! (Though my belly is periodically cramping up in protest…)

#4. Ok, last food fiasco for this week… and guess what! It was not even a fiasco!! I had at least one success this weekend!
      We got a bushel of bananas the other day, and today they suddenly all went from green to overripe, so we decided to make some yummy banana bread!!
      And miracle of miracles, while we were busy boiling the corn to death, the bread was turning a nice shade of golden… So that when our meal of dehydrated corn kernels was done, we had nice warm, moist banana bread to wash it down with….
      Sigh… what a lovely end to a lovely culinary weekend…. J

MomentS of the Week...

　Too many to choose from this time round! I have a whole list of nominations!

1. Teaching one of the local girls, S. a few chords on the ukelele, and discovering that she is an absolute natural! She is quite shy to speak to me in English, but comes back every afternoon to play a little ukelele… :)

2. Taking the girls outside to practice their spellings with a word search, and putting on some Florence and the Machine while we worked. Hearing N. start to hum along, seeing the younger one start to ‘shake it out’ just a little. Eventually ending up having a mini-morning dance party :)

3. Moving in to my new house with my new roomie on Friday! :) Watching Revolutionary Road , munching melty Cadbury, and slapping mosquitoes on the konde (patio). Ending the film, both taking a deep breath, and offering up thanks to the gods that we were sitting on a konde in Malawi and not… well…. On Revolutionary Road…

4. Bicycling to the next town with my roomie to get provisions! (ahem… read: chocolate, biscuits, and crisps! Hehe). Buying my very first Chitenje! And wearing it out later! (Pics to come when my camera arrives…)

5. A dinner party with new friends. Sitting around, gazing at the stars, having some good chats. The bliss of realizing that there is no place I would rather be. The yearning of wishing all my loved ones could share it with me.

My New Room

Feb 10^th, 2012

I just lay my head back in my new bed and was bathed in moonlight… Mmmmm….. J

Feb 11^th, 2012

Groggily I open my eyes and gaze out my new bedroom window.
Through the trees I see a lake turned to molten gold by the sunrise.
*sigh of contentment*
Mmmm…. Just let me lay here and bask in this moment a while longer…

15 min later…
Reading by the light of the rising sun….  

Full Moon Fancy

     This is truly a drop-everything, forget-work, take-out-a-pen-and-pencil, sit-on-the-konde (patio) -and-stare, type of night.

     A wide road of silver light undulates gently as it leads to the solid, dark wall that is the far horizon. The edge of the earth, lit by periodic flashes of startling red.

    The gentle crash of waves. The rhythmic hum of crickets.

    The swaying silhouettes of branches, leaves, trunks. Black against the varied shades of gray that provide their backdrop.

     A painting, touched by delicate traces of life.

     And above it all, that fluorescent white orb. So strong here! Uninhibited. No competition with lights of any kind, its natural radiance shines through pure and innocent.

    Here I sit, desperate to capture the scene in photographs, words, drawings that my clumsy fingers are incapable of producing. Why? For whom? For me?
No, for everyone.
Everyone I wish was here to share it with me.
I could not ask for more than I have found in this place, and I am so thankful for all the wonderful welcomes and new friends.
But oh, how you would love it! How we would dance and sing and sip cool drinks under this moon! Letting that healing white light force us to forget the petty everyday and simply bask in the magic of this scene. Of being together, at such a moment in time.

Transitions and First Impressions

　
　 A sunny, HOT day in Malawi. Classroom nearly set up and ready for the big first day tomorrow, but it is far too hot to do any more work just now. Instead, myself, the cat, and the friendly gecko on the wall are all sprawled in the shade in a Sunday afternoon daze. As my mind is floating in air like bathwater, and therefore is incapable of forming coherent thoughts, let me share some excerpts from my journal over the last few days…

Jan 30^th, 9:00 pm, Chilumba, Malawi

          Upon my requesting that my new boss, N., help me set up my mosquito net, (I was mildly concerned about the legions of bug corpses on top, and how to let it down without them landing all over my sheets…) she obligingly came to my room to demonstrate.
         “There….
(Ewwwww. Pause. As I started to write this a dead bug fell from somewhere and landed on my page…. Ahem… continuing…)
         “There are essentially 2 types of mosquito netters…” N. explained as she nonchalantly tossed the net (and all the corpses….) over my bed.
         “The first type let the net hang all the way to the floor, with no gaps. This is what I do, as all our nets are quite long.
        “Some people however, are quite paranoid about critters and snakes etc, so they tuck the net into their mattress the whole way round.”
        At this she gave a sort of shrug meant to indicate that this was completely unnecessary, to which I replied with a non-committal agreement-style noise in reply.
        Obviously, ten minutes after she had left the room, every millimetre of my net was tucked into my mattress.
       
Ok, ok, I know, wimpy right? But here is my defence:

A) N. is SO hardcore! Not only has she been here 15 years, but I also just watched her squash a cockroach on the fridge door. Using her bare hand.

B) There has been a long-legged, long-antennae creature crawling up the wall in front of me the whole time I have been writing.

C) That giant spider on the wall that I felt so comfortable with earlier, when he did not MOVE? Well, I came back from brushing my teeth and he was no longer on the wall!! Careful inspection of my sheets and pillowcases has taken place, and net will be staying tucked in!
(As a side note, I am happy to report that as of February 3^rd I was comfortable sleeping with my net simply dangling on the floor J )

Jan 31^st
Not even phased by the bugs tonight! They are my friends! (So long as each of them stays in their habitual spot!! AND safely on the other side of my net!)
Eish…. Already got a couple massively itchy bites on my ankle though… uh oh….

Feb 1^st
Ok… I am definitely going a little crazy… I just crawled into bed and felt a little sad when I realized that my giant spider friends and long legged wall climbing creature were missing… They were Deeted to death earlier this evening! :(
And this is night 3??

Feb 2^nd
I am writing this, laying on my bed with the net still up, and I am not even a little afraid of creepy crawlies! Although a mozzie did just land on my pillow…. Hmmm…

Stay tuned for a continuation of the Battle of the Bugs...

Picture of the week!

The garden (house on the left, lake on the right, playground and drama house behind me!)

Admittedly, not the most high quality photograph I have ever taken, but it's the only one i've got as my camera went missing in transit L so it will have to do until my replacement arrives! Then there will be photos galore to make up for it! Promise!  For now, please just note that it is GREEEEEN!!  :)

Moment of the Week!

        During dinner Thursday night, our lovely neighbour, was being a scrounge and picking the scraps off peoples’ plates.
       “Ouch! I just ate that stone from the lentils! AHHH!!! AND A BEETLE!!!”
        Bah hahahahahaaaa
        Quite sad though, because the poor half crunched beetle lay on the plate still wriggling until we put it out of its misery… L

        Lesson of the day: In weak evening light, stick to your own plate! (and check your food carrrrrrefully...  was that really a burnt piece of rice?)

Foodie Friday

On the drive up, I decided to dedicate one post a week to food.
This was because:

a)I am notorious for trying really hard in the kitchen, but mostly ending up with a big mess and semi-edible food.

b) With limited supplies and unfamiliar produce, I expect there will be some interesting combos...

and

c) On the drive up I was asked if i had ever tried mice (roasted or sun-dried, on a stick), a common snack here in Malawi.
(NOT including a picture this week as they are all too grusome.  Google it.)

Ahem...  So, I may include the occasional local delicacy in there too ;)
Bon appetit!

TGIF

Ok, for real, my first blog post, from Malawi! Yay!


So, this time last week, I was huddled in a cozy London pub with some wonderful old work mates, munching (and by ‘munching’ I mean stuffing my face with…) a salad bowl sized portion of wedges and dip and knocking back enough pints to satisfy me for the duration of my absence from the UK. I imagined where I might be 7 days from that moment…. And… well, suffice it to say… reality is much kinder!


Instead of my jungle book style fantasy, this evening found me practicing my Tumbuka greetings with friendly passers-by on the beach (Wuli makola?), before heading to THE most amazing bar/café in the world to meet some new friends!
Yes! There are people here! And they go for a beer on a Friday!! And not only do they go for a beer…. But… the location! I literally searched all of London for a bar as amazing as this!
(Ok, ok, it is hardly fair to compare beach bars to London pubs…but…)
Warm, lit by the moon, with the waves lapping up on the beach a few feet from where we sit…. To be fair, the beer is as warm as the air… but they also have homemade donuts on the counter! Mmmm….

We then stumbled up the path through a rainforest hung with vines back to the house, where we all sat around for a delicious home cooked meal, some good banter, and an early night, and now I am cozy-ed up under my mosquito net writing this update to you, new book by my side!

(PS There are sooooo many books here in everyone’s houses! Beach Bar + Books + Donuts = All it takes to make me smile!
Oh, and some cool new friends, to offset the fact that I wish you all were HERE!)

Happy Friday everyone!


PPS. I am so hardcore, I just casually squashed a mosquito between my fingers before writing that last line… :P