Sunday, May 27, 2007
It’s funny what I miss
Its strange being in a remote area with limited access to the long list of things that, in Canada, I took for granted. Here there is no clothing store that I have seen, or at least not one that has walls. I did buy a pair of jeans today that were hanging from a clothing rack (a few branches built into a low fence) by the roadside. There is no store that sells kitchen items; knives, bowls, pots and pans, unless you count the teenagers, once again, at the roadside selling their stuff from a tarp. There are shops with food; but these do not hold items that tantalize the taste buds unless you are not allergic to the hazelnuts in Nutella. And, the “restaurants” offer menu items like the french-fry omelet (chipsi mayi), prepared on a hundred year old wok heated by a charcoal fire burning in a recycled car wheel. Sports is a spectacle here, in that the football matches draw a huge bipartisan crowd, but its football (soccer) and I’m not a fan of the game itself.
At home in Canada we would shop for food when hunger struck. This is not the most practical way to buy food and I suppose we ended up paying a bit more too, but it was our way. I miss the ability to go down the hill to Pepper’s grocery store in Cadboro bay in Victoria and pick up fresh basil, parsley, garlic and a bag of pasta. Go next door to Smuggler’s Cove beer and wine or across the street to Mark Anthony’s and pick out a nice but inexpensive bottle of either a Chardonay or Gwertz to go along with our meal. I’d go home and throw the fresh ingredients together with some extra virgin olive oil to make a light pasta dish, perfect for a warm summer evening.
Also on the food front I miss restaurants and the wide variety of menu items that are available. We ate out more in Edmonton than we did in Victoria but I think that is due to the cold weather and no Pepper’s grocery. It’s strange to me now that I don’t really miss the more exotic dishes but that’s just the way it is. I would really love to go to Earl’s and have a bacon cheeseburger with (not fries) a salad, which I don’t think I actually ever had…the salad that is. The other burger that would hit the spot is Red Robin’s Guacamole burger. This huge burger has not only a heaping serving of guac, but a heavy dose of pork fat in its two plus slices of bacon.
It doesn’t help, and I don’t recommend reading this book if you are in a remote area with no access to fresh, plentiful ingredients, reading Under the Tuscan Sun. And, while Frances Mayes is a bit of a flowery writer her descriptive style is great, except when she describes food. Last night I had to skip an entire chapter that consisted of tasty narrative of a pile of recipes that were also included. I may have to read something about a motorbike journey around the world instead. But, I digress…
There is something calming and strangely appealing about going to a store, grabbing a bag of nacho chips and a block of aged cheddar. A quick meeting of the cheese and a grater followed by tossing the cheese over a plate of the crunchy chips and a quick stint in a microwave oven creates bliss. While I don’t miss the microwave itself the ingredients are not available here at all. Even at the huge stores in Arusha, orange cheese in unavailable and the New Zealand cheddar, which is sharp and tasty, is not the same.
If its not obvious to you by now I’ll tell you, I like to cook. Cooking in Tanzania is very dissimilar to cooking in Canada. I have my Joy of Cooking book for rustic recipes but with a gas oven that has large holes in the back and has no temperature gauge its difficult to get things right. Having access to few ingredients to choose from makes it tough to have variety in our diet but we are making due. It is the variety that I miss, I guess, the choice.
Its not quite the same riding a vintage bicycle down a dirt road to town and buying vegetables in a language, not English. The state of the vegetable stand is also odd; wooden slats cut, probably with a machete, by hand and nailed haphazardly together to form a “table” and a “roof”. There is room for one or two clerks who accept meager amounts of money and make change from their float, stored under a small tarp or in their traditional wrap.
I also miss certain things around the house. It may not be what you think. Things like a microwave and TV are not high on my list just now, perhaps later. It is things like my coffee maker. I have a French press that was given to me early on by a new friend. It is great don’t get me wrong but it is small and only makes about 5/8 of a cup. It takes a lot of work to make one cup of coffee; boil water, fill thermos, add coffee to French press, pour in boiled water, stir, press, pour, and then watch out if you get to the bottom because the sediment is there. But, it does taste like heaven. The second cup is more difficult as washing out the press makes an added step. I would like to set the timer in the evening and wake up to the subdued beeps of my coffeemaker and pour liquid gold into my mug…ah the simple pleasures.
My love for cooking also gives me an appreciation for good tools of the trade, knives and…well mostly knives. As a side note I would love a whisk that didn’t come apart at the base of the handle halfway through my awesome Guacamole mixing. Knives must be sharp and of a size that is functional for the task at hand, whatever that may be. We have three knives; one bread knife with the tip snapped off, a paring knife that is in surprisingly good shape and the knife that we bought in Arusha. The new knife is not bad, about 10 inches long and made of sufficient quality steel. Its edge lasts for a couple of tasks and would last longer if I could use a proper tool to sharpen it. As it is now I use, either the back of the bread knife or sharpen both the new knife and the paring knife at the same time by running each edge upon the other. This becomes a somewhat fun challenge though, so I shouldn’t complain about it.
I will complain, however about the lack of baseball here. I did see a baseball bat in a bookstore in Arusha and some people have heard of the game but it is not really here. We have had to resort to using a homemade bat and a tennis ball at the tennis court with me pitching and Abby at bat. The bat is a leftover piece of a branch, the rest of which is Nik’s walking stick. We do have fun with that I can assure you, so while I miss watching baseball, we have come up with a means to overcome this to some extent.
There are many things that I miss that were taken for granted in Canada. I left out friends and family because that is a given. Things, items of convenience, simple pleasures, Mars bars (oops that’s not really parallel to the rest of the list), these don’t make life, they provide a momentary escape, an ooh, an ahh, something to savor and enjoy. Be it food, fun or something that makes life easier, these things are nice to have but not truly a necessity. We still have much more than those around us, and probably more than we need. We are not living the lifestyle we had at home and that’s fine. We are learning a new one and though it will change again when we are finished here, we will have new standards.
At home in Canada we would shop for food when hunger struck. This is not the most practical way to buy food and I suppose we ended up paying a bit more too, but it was our way. I miss the ability to go down the hill to Pepper’s grocery store in Cadboro bay in Victoria and pick up fresh basil, parsley, garlic and a bag of pasta. Go next door to Smuggler’s Cove beer and wine or across the street to Mark Anthony’s and pick out a nice but inexpensive bottle of either a Chardonay or Gwertz to go along with our meal. I’d go home and throw the fresh ingredients together with some extra virgin olive oil to make a light pasta dish, perfect for a warm summer evening.
Also on the food front I miss restaurants and the wide variety of menu items that are available. We ate out more in Edmonton than we did in Victoria but I think that is due to the cold weather and no Pepper’s grocery. It’s strange to me now that I don’t really miss the more exotic dishes but that’s just the way it is. I would really love to go to Earl’s and have a bacon cheeseburger with (not fries) a salad, which I don’t think I actually ever had…the salad that is. The other burger that would hit the spot is Red Robin’s Guacamole burger. This huge burger has not only a heaping serving of guac, but a heavy dose of pork fat in its two plus slices of bacon.
It doesn’t help, and I don’t recommend reading this book if you are in a remote area with no access to fresh, plentiful ingredients, reading Under the Tuscan Sun. And, while Frances Mayes is a bit of a flowery writer her descriptive style is great, except when she describes food. Last night I had to skip an entire chapter that consisted of tasty narrative of a pile of recipes that were also included. I may have to read something about a motorbike journey around the world instead. But, I digress…
There is something calming and strangely appealing about going to a store, grabbing a bag of nacho chips and a block of aged cheddar. A quick meeting of the cheese and a grater followed by tossing the cheese over a plate of the crunchy chips and a quick stint in a microwave oven creates bliss. While I don’t miss the microwave itself the ingredients are not available here at all. Even at the huge stores in Arusha, orange cheese in unavailable and the New Zealand cheddar, which is sharp and tasty, is not the same.
If its not obvious to you by now I’ll tell you, I like to cook. Cooking in Tanzania is very dissimilar to cooking in Canada. I have my Joy of Cooking book for rustic recipes but with a gas oven that has large holes in the back and has no temperature gauge its difficult to get things right. Having access to few ingredients to choose from makes it tough to have variety in our diet but we are making due. It is the variety that I miss, I guess, the choice.
Its not quite the same riding a vintage bicycle down a dirt road to town and buying vegetables in a language, not English. The state of the vegetable stand is also odd; wooden slats cut, probably with a machete, by hand and nailed haphazardly together to form a “table” and a “roof”. There is room for one or two clerks who accept meager amounts of money and make change from their float, stored under a small tarp or in their traditional wrap.
I also miss certain things around the house. It may not be what you think. Things like a microwave and TV are not high on my list just now, perhaps later. It is things like my coffee maker. I have a French press that was given to me early on by a new friend. It is great don’t get me wrong but it is small and only makes about 5/8 of a cup. It takes a lot of work to make one cup of coffee; boil water, fill thermos, add coffee to French press, pour in boiled water, stir, press, pour, and then watch out if you get to the bottom because the sediment is there. But, it does taste like heaven. The second cup is more difficult as washing out the press makes an added step. I would like to set the timer in the evening and wake up to the subdued beeps of my coffeemaker and pour liquid gold into my mug…ah the simple pleasures.
My love for cooking also gives me an appreciation for good tools of the trade, knives and…well mostly knives. As a side note I would love a whisk that didn’t come apart at the base of the handle halfway through my awesome Guacamole mixing. Knives must be sharp and of a size that is functional for the task at hand, whatever that may be. We have three knives; one bread knife with the tip snapped off, a paring knife that is in surprisingly good shape and the knife that we bought in Arusha. The new knife is not bad, about 10 inches long and made of sufficient quality steel. Its edge lasts for a couple of tasks and would last longer if I could use a proper tool to sharpen it. As it is now I use, either the back of the bread knife or sharpen both the new knife and the paring knife at the same time by running each edge upon the other. This becomes a somewhat fun challenge though, so I shouldn’t complain about it.
I will complain, however about the lack of baseball here. I did see a baseball bat in a bookstore in Arusha and some people have heard of the game but it is not really here. We have had to resort to using a homemade bat and a tennis ball at the tennis court with me pitching and Abby at bat. The bat is a leftover piece of a branch, the rest of which is Nik’s walking stick. We do have fun with that I can assure you, so while I miss watching baseball, we have come up with a means to overcome this to some extent.
There are many things that I miss that were taken for granted in Canada. I left out friends and family because that is a given. Things, items of convenience, simple pleasures, Mars bars (oops that’s not really parallel to the rest of the list), these don’t make life, they provide a momentary escape, an ooh, an ahh, something to savor and enjoy. Be it food, fun or something that makes life easier, these things are nice to have but not truly a necessity. We still have much more than those around us, and probably more than we need. We are not living the lifestyle we had at home and that’s fine. We are learning a new one and though it will change again when we are finished here, we will have new standards.
