Cooking for 3.5

I have been enjoying our new kitchen. As I mentioned before, we usually eat two out of three meals a day at home. Depending on Nate’s work schedule, we might go out to the old patisserie at the junction for breakfast with newly arrived ILRI/USDA colleagues, or Nate will come to Yabello Town for lunch at Kaffe Aleem, or we’ll make the trek to the junction for dinner at the Yabello Motel.

Otherwise, we’re eating at home. I’ve made crepes (Nutella! Fig jam!) a couple times for breakfast, though we usually stick to oatmeal or couscous with NIDO milk, bananas, and raisins. Beyond those staples, I haven’t made the same thing twice for lunch or dinner.

Our first special meal in the house was black bean burritos with homemade salsa and tortillas. I tried a couple recipes for the tortillas – one flour tortilla recipe from the More-With-Less cookbook that Kathy graciously handed down to me over Christmas, and one corn tortilla recipe that I found online while we were in Addis. Both recipes worked pretty well and resulted in enough tortilla dough for two dinners. The beans were a problem, though. I soaked them for about 8 hours, but that apparently wasn’t enough. After boiling them for over 4 hours they remained rather hard, though edible. We’ve been eating them in various forms – burritos, rice-and-beans, black bean and sweet potato soup -- for two days (thanks, refrigerator!). My plan for the last of the beans was to make refried beans today, but the power went out all night and I’m not going to risk that the beans have gone off.

In our Yabello kitchen - tortilla making

Beyond that highly planned out meal, I’ve been doing my best to bring variety to the rather limited selection of fruits and vegetables available to us. Things we can get any day: tomatoes, potatoes, onions, cabbage, hot peppers. Things we can get some days: avocados, bananas, sweet potatoes, mangoes, papaya, carrots. From Addis, I brought all the carb, bean, and sauce-making staples I thought we’d need, and we’ve found that a lot of those things are also available here for slightly higher prices.

Using those materials, I’ve made cabbage and tomato salad (with a soy sauce dressing from More-With-Less) and French fries, boiled potatoes with Dijon mustard sauce, "middle eastern" lentil soup from More-with-Less, coconut curry lentils and sweet potatoes, coconut pancakes, and rice with peanut sauce. If anyone has ideas for meals with the foods listed above, or especially with easy sauces for rice/pasta/lentils or salad, please send them along! (For sauces/dressing, I have: mustard, vinegar, mayo, soy sauce, peanut butter, jam, butter, milk powder, ghee, ketchup, olive oil, tomato paste, coconut milk, lots of sweet and savory spices… getting any ideas?)

Snack time twice a day has become a rather important part of the day for me, Faranji, and Cora. We try to buy a couple rolls every day for Cora’s snack times and when she won’t eat anything else (she will reliably eat bread with Vache Qui Rit cheese and sometimes with jelly or peanut butter). Snacks also might consist of hot popcorn, tea biscuits, NIDO milk (warm or cold), salted peanuts and raisins, bananas galore, mango slices… 

Some days, Cora and I will head to meet Nate for lunch a Yabello Town restaurant to get my favorite Ethiopian dish, tibs chakalat (I have no idea how to spell that second word, but it sounds like the French for “chocolate”). It’s basically spiced beef or lamb chunks with onion, pepper, and tomato slices in a tower filled at the bottom with burning coals. You eat it with the usual injera bread by scooping it out of the top of the tower, trying not to burn your fingers in the hot oil. I have finally gotten used to the sour flavor of injera and actually enjoy it now. Adventures in eating, gotta love it.

When we eat out, Cora usually eats some form of eggs and bread. We can get omelets, egg sandwiches, egg-with-meat, scrambled eggs… so she’s definitely getting her protein. She is less adventurous about eating than she used to, but she's still a pretty good eater. I hope she gets more adventurous as time goes on here - this is a lot of changes at once for our