Food. There are some amazing foods here in Ethiopia. I was thinking yesterday about all of the new foods that I have been eating here that I never/rarely ate in America. And surprisingly, most of the “new” foods are not Ethiopian foods. In America, I was a very picky eater. I ate pretty much the same things all of the time. I loved to cook and try new recipes but they weren’t exactly “new” recipes they basically were just “slightly varied” from other foods I made.
As far as vegetables-if they weren’t deep fried or in a salad heavily coated with ranch dressing, I didn’t eat them. Within the past year I have been eating (and loving) so many new vegetables. I now love: eggplant, beets, zucchini, pumpkin, all bell peppers, carrots, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower. I have experimented and made them many different ways. Who knew there were so many ways to make veggies?! I am kinda sad that I missed out on the last 31 years of veggie eating. But I think I have started to make up for it. I eat so many veggies now it’s crazy.
Fruits-not much has changed since living in Ethiopia. My favorite is still green apples but they are very expensive here. The fruits I eat on a regular basis are oranges, bananas, and pineapples. All others are either very expensive (like apples and plums) or I don’t really know what to do with them (like mangos and papayas). I guess I will have to start experimenting with my fruits when I return from the USA.
Cooking. As I mentioned earlier, I did cook in the USA. However, I did not cook every day or even every other day. Because it was primarily just myself and Jasmine eating the meals we often had leftovers and would eat them before I would make something new. But in those meals I used a lot of packaged and canned foods. I rarely made anything from actual scratch. . .actually I don’t think I ever did. I didn’t even known how to make spaghetti sauce from tomatoes! I also ate a lot of fast food in the States. Oh, how things have changed. Most days I cook three (or even four) meals a day.
Prepackaged food and fast food is a thing of the past in my life. Which is actually good because they are not healthy for you. I would say the only packaged food that we eat is pasta noodles (praise Jesus I don’t have to make pastas from scratch!!) and the canned meat that gracious people from the States ship to me.
Everything else is pretty much from scratch. I have taught myself how to cook things that have turned out amazing. In the States, I always used recipes when cooking. Now, I never use them. Most days I don’t even have much of a plan for a meal-I just walk into the kitchen assess what we have and generate something. In the States if I was missing an ingredient I would just hop in the car and go grab it but here I don’t have that luxury. Other than basics like potatoes, tomatoes, and onions I would have to walk a bit, get on a taxi to head into town by the missing ingredients, and head back home. So now I make meals based on whatever we have available, not based on what I want to eat.
So now I pretty much cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day (maybe not lunch every day due to my schedule but I never used to make lunch in America so it seems excess now!). Some days after making breakfast I even have to make Fiker’s lunch for school. I try to make more dinner than we need so I can give her the leftovers the next day but that doesn’t always work out.
I eat a lot less meat here, also. I hardly ever eat red meat. This is mainly because for quality red meat I have to get it from Addis (the capital city about 45 mins away). I will sometimes stock up and freeze it but we don’t go to Addis that much anymore. When we do eat meat it is usually chicken or tuna. I can get chicken at semi-decent prices but due to wonderful people that mail me presents, I usually have a stock of canned chicken, tuna, and salmon on hand.
So you would think that with all this veggie eating and less meat that I would have lots a ton of weight, huh? Not really. I have lost some, I don’t know how much. I lost quite a bit in the beginning but I gained some of it back before the wedding and I have gained a good bit back in the past 2 1/2 months. I guess stress will do that to you, huh? I eat a lot of carbs here, more than I ever did in the States. When I return back to Ethiopia, my mission is to find a way to cut out more carbs.
Yesterday, we carved a pumpkin. Today, I am going to make pumpkin and sweet potato soup. Which is a first, by the way. :)
