Chakula cha Jioni (Dinner)

Dinner, like breakfast, is prepared every day by Lucy to Mungai’s specifications. As previously mentioned, Mungai is Kikuyu so his specifications basically mean “cook it like githeri”. What is githeri you might wonder? Well here it is:



Githeri is a stewed mixture of kidney beans, corn, potatoes, and carrots; it’s the staple of a Kikuyu’s diet. The corn here is different that the sweet corn we’re used to in the US. It’s the corn that goes into making cornmeal, animal feed, high fructose corn syrup, and the many, many corn byproducts produced in the US. It’s much firmer than sweet corn and, crunches in your mouth; it’s quite good. As far as we can tell, Kikuyus eat their food entirely unencumbered by pesky things like spices or sauces. The blank slate of Githeri is certainly tasty and filling but after 10 weeks, we’re going through a lot of sauces. Living on the coast near Mombasa is interesting, as it is a melting pot of cultures as previously mentioned, and it is near the center of the spice trade (Zanzibar is a spice island). Native coastal food (aka Swahili food) is generally well-seasoned, but there are also so many transplants here from upcountry, that much of what is served in local restaurants, as well as in our house, is devoid of seasoning.

Our other typical courses are stewed veggies (below), and lentils. The veggies are healthy but not terribly tasty, while the lentils are one of our favorite dishes (Lucy adds some Indian flavors). It's all generally the same consistency as githeri.



In terms of starches, there is usually one or two of rice, chapatti, or ugali. The rice is always brown rice, as mzee is diabetic, and will occasionally come in “pilau” form, which is a combination of Indian spices cooked into the rice. Chapatti are delicious fried flatbread, but I think that it’s probably best not to become too attached to this oil-based food. M mentioned ugali in his previous post; very bland polenta. Many Kenyans LOVE ugali. We have marveled at slight men and woman taking head-sized slabs of ugali and wolfing it down in minutes. We tend to leave most of the ugali to mzee.

The proteins are the part that I don’t care for one bit; I’m pretty sure that Mzee is convinced that I’m a vegetarian at this point. All of the chicken and fish is stewed in tomato sauce, with generally unfortunate results. After having chicken for the first week, we asked Mungai about fish, as we’re right next to the ocean, and the village where M works is actually a fishing village. He was happy to oblige. A few days later, he and M came home with a large bag of frozen fish. I think that he bought about 20 kg of kingfish (not an exaggeration) because the price was right, but it has been sitting unwrapped in our freezer for nine weeks, with its moisture slowly sublimating from its tissues. M just complained to me that a fish head was biting a bag of his sim-sim. (see below)



I typically eat githeri, lentils/veggies, and then take a generous helping of salad with oil and vinegar dressing. For those of you keeping score, that’s a lot of veggies. Luckily I’m a creature of habit so it doesn’t really bother me to eat the same thing most weeknights.

This weekend, however, mzee was out of town so we told Lucy to take Friday-Monday AM off and proceeded to enjoy preparing our own food. Since we both really like to cook, we went to town. Rosemary-lemon chicken, roasted root veggies, and curried cauliflower for Sunday dinner, guacamole for Saturday afternoon, and American-style eggs for breakfast both days. We even managed to figure out how to finesse the oven to make Irish Soda Bread (thanks Mrs. Hill! pic below). So, so delicious. I now appreciate the variety in our diet so much more than I did before. We have so many great choices and yet when people ask us what “American” food is, we can’t really answer them.