Baobab Fruit and Cooking in Zambia

I posted a long time ago about how difficult it is to have Taco Night here in Zambia. (http://offeringupmylife.blogspot.ca/2014/02/cooking-canadian-meals-in-zambia.html)

I have had a follow up blog on how much more time consuming daily living is here and I'm finally posting it! More on that below... but first - sometimes you just have to try something new!

I saw this today being sold by one of the lady vendors on the street in town. I had been told by a friend that it was a baobab fruit.  I'd never heard of it so I didn't pay much mind but today, since I was buying some vegetables already I got it tossed into my bag just to top my purchases up to a nice even number (sometimes you can wait a long time for change!)  It's good to be curious.  I had heard you can buy baobab powder and Andrew had eaten (a fresher, not so dried) one of these while working at Chodort.  So I had a slight idea of what to expect.  See photos for the process.....

A (dried) Baobab Fruit.  I bought this in town for K2 (about 30 cents)
Baobab Fruit is supposed to be super nutritious for you (google it)
It's also super sour (at least I found it to be!)

The inside, after I scraped out all the white goodness
I didn't think to take photos until after we had started.
Note: they are very hard to open - Andrew used his saw!

The good white stuff that I scraped out of the pod (we had already started
pounding so picture more white powdery material around these black seeds)

I used child labour to help me pound :)

The white powder from the Baobab fruit

I got at least a cup of it - I'm pretty sure you'd pay at least
$20 for this in the USA! Probably more.
We put some on our rice at supper time.

Now that the fun of the Baobab fruit exploration is over - on to the everyday!

I must admit I don't even think about all this much now.  It was quite a difficult adjustment when we arrived here though.  Everything was just so much more work.  (And I can't complain because I actually had the money for the food, running CLEAN water, and electricity - most of the time!)

Believe it or not - there's rice in there....

After about 10 rinses I finally get it clean enough for my taste

Beans: no canned beans in Choma.  So it takes planning to
soak them overnight and cook. I now keep a stash of
cooked beans in the freezer for those meals (like Chilli) that
I just want to toss in a "can"

Fruits and vegetables are bleached and then rinsed, and then dried.
If you happen to eat one before it's dried you risk getting a bit of a tummy
ache from the water (see next picture)

Our water filter (called a candle filter)

All the water we consume (unless it cooks and boils for at least 10 minutes) is run through a water filter. The Choma city water (we'e been told numerous times) is "safe" to drink.  We always seem to get a tummy bug if we do accidentally consume it (think how hard it is to dry lettuce!) The kids and I use this water to brush our teeth.  Andrew uses the tap water - except on the sporadic times it comes out of the tap brown. A missionary friend and I just figured out that our hair was often greasy even after shampooing that same day. We finally realized that it must be days they dump chemicals in the water (as it feels like that smooth between your fingers if you get bleach on them). EWWW.  

I didn't drink very much when we first got here, even though it was hot dry season, because (even filtered) the town water tasted disgusting to me (still does).  We found a good solution - we started (and still do) to go to the other MCC family's house who lives in Choma.  They live a bit outside of the city and are very fortunate to have a bore hole (think nice clean well!) that provides their water.  So now we just take the many bottles we've collected there and fill them up.  I drink plenty of water these days! 

Our drinking water - from the bore hole

Needless to say - we really do dry our fruit and vegetables out well after washing!  (Lettuce is always a challenge - even with a salad spinner it never quite gets dry. We still eat it when we can find it as it's a rare treat!  Currently we have LOTS coming up in our garden though we still wash everything in our garden too - even with bleach).

apples and tomatoes

green beans

Another thing that I had to get used to is the sugar. It's not white. I'm still surprised (every time!) when I go to Lusaka and try to put sugar in my coffee.  I always have to taste it to make sure it's not salt!

I thought it was just organic and less processed - but I recently read the label and they add palm oil to it.

Another interesting fact: I heard a group of children answer this question at school once, "What is a good source of Vitamin A?"  They shouted out together, "SUGAR!"  That one puzzled me until I realized that they enrich the sugar here (and a lot of other common foods) with Vitamin A.

Our sugar container

Baking.  Sugar and Flour.  You can really see the colour difference in this one!