The Food Blog

In answer to the questions from many of you, yes I am enjoying the food here though it's different than what I expected. I can't say I really expected anything (as I had no clue what general characteristics made food “Tanzanian”), but I didn't think rice and beans were staples of the local diet. Well, they are. And for the girl who argued with her mom and sister about how much she disliked eating rice all the time for supper, this minor detail came as a BIG surprise. Needless to say, the dish is growing on me and I'm finding I actually do enjoy it. But here, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go in order through a typical culinary day in TZ:

Many of the breakfast foods are the same as in the states (i.e. hardboiled eggs, pork bacon, pancakes, oatmeal, granola) though something new was chapati, which is also eaten at other meals but mainly at breakfast. I had no idea what it was, but apparently it's quite popular in other parts of the world (so my fellow LCCT colleagues tell me). Chapati are similar to crepes but thicker in consistency and usually eating with a bit of sugar. While at TCDC, I always ate a bowl of cereal because I knew once we arrived in Dar, we really would only ever drink milk in the powdered form. Now that I'm in Dar, I opt for a granola bar and banana purchased earlier in the week from a fruit vendor along what I call the Duka Strip (duka means shop, and one of the roads leading out of campus is lined with countless dukas, or stands selling anything from fruit to laundry soap to hardware).

Lunch and supper are pretty similar menus. Aside from two nights out at ethnic restaurants – one Indian an one Ethiopian – I usually eat rice and beans with a side vegetable, usually cooked spinach or okra, for lunch and supper. Today in Kiswahili class, our teacher teased us because all we know how to order is wali na maharage (rice and beans), which is apparently the food you eat during tough times or when you don't have enough money to buy something more. So think of it as a typical Luther student's batch of Ramen noodles... With the rice, you could also get beef (like steak chunks), chicken or liver, which I accidentally ordered then ate without knowing what it was. Mmm good (blech).

One of the popular “fast food” options is chipsi mayay (I'm not sure the spelling is correct...) but basically it's an omelette with french fries in it. I haven't tried it yet and actually have no desire to – a little too much grease and cholesterol in one sitting. For drinks, sodas here are sold in the cool glass bottles we used to get in Rothsay when our car was being serviced, though I am always getting bottled water because it's so hot!

Above is a picture of the lunch meal we had at the Duluti Coffee House and Restaurant in Arusha. It was a really nice open-air restaurant (like every restaurant) with lots of artwork and a beautiful large wooden table. Our lunch consisted of squash, aboriginal chicken, bananas cooked with glazed steak, makande (one of the staple foods for the Meru people. It's a mixture of beans, maize and coconut), chapati, pilau (spiced rice with vegetables and meat – also very popular), stewed greens, and fresh bananas (my favorite!).