Food, glorious food!

I feel like this is a kind of long overdue post but I’m finally in the right place to write it. Food in Senegal… something I could talk about for days and days on end – I’ll try to keep it short for your sake. Let me start with why tonight’s an awesome night for writing this entry: dinner was epic. I’ve heard about this chicken place from a few volunteers and because dinner was supposed to be beef and peas, a few of us decided to skip out on Center dinner and try the chicken place. I wish I could give a better name but it really was just a chicken place. The room was dingy and dirty, as one of my friends described it “the type of place you think you’re going to get tetanus just from sitting there.” Nervous at first, we had been warned about the nature of the “restaurant” so we ordered (a half chicken and fries for each person) and waited. Food in Senegal, for some reason, takes SO LONG to cook (probably because they’re cooking over a fire, but it’s still hard to get used to) but about 45 minutes later we were presented with maybe the most glorious meal I’ve seen (at least that I’ve seen in a while). Just asking to be devoured was half a roasted chicken, a salad covered in tahini sauce, and a mound of French fries. The only thing untouched on my plate was the salad (I’m still very nervous about uncooked veggies) but I ate the sauce off of it so if the salad was going to make me sick, the sauce will probably take care of that. A short cab ride back to the Center and an apple left over from dinner, I’m here!

Now, on to the rest of Senegalese food (you’ll have to deal with some misspellings but I don’t really care about spelling dishes correctly). To start at the beginning, breakfast. If a Senegalese person eats breakfast, it is most likely a piece of French bread (very, very store made) and it possibly, but most likely not, has butter, chocolate, or processed cheese on it. If you were going to have an expensive breakfast (about 125 CFA so $0.30US) you can get beans (a kind of spicy, cooked beans) on your bread. If you’re REALLY going crazy and splurging they can add a sliced hardboiled egg for another 50-100CFA. For lunch you’re usually looking to get some cheb u jen or fish and rice in Wolof. It’s the national dish of Senegal and its cooked rice with fish in the center of the bowl. Aside from breakfast all meals are served in large communal bowls and, depending on the family, you eat with spoons or your right hand. With the fish in the center of the bowl is usually a carrot, cabbage, potato, manioc, and maybe some other vegetables that have been cooked down for HOURS. Cheb u jen can also be red (if it’s cooked with a tomato sauce). At the beginning of my time in Senegal I thought all cheb tasted like rotten fish, I’ve gotten used to it and only taste the fish if I’m eating it, not so much if I’m sticking to rice.

For dinner, usually, families can get more creative. I like to think of dinner as being broken down into 3 types: rice meals, couscous meals, and special meals. First, rice meals. In addition to cheb u jen there are a million other things you can do with rice to make a communal bowl. You can make a peanut sauce (maffe I think) or a vinegary onion sauce (yassa), you could cover it in okra and oil (something that starts with an S). As far as couscous goes, the most typical is with a sauce from the never-die tree. I used to HATE this meal because the couscous texture isn’t great and the sauce just tastes like salt… but I recently found out that this tree is AMAZINGLY FULL of vitamins and wonderful things (that my diet is otherwise lacking) so I’ve changed my perspective on it a little. You could also have couscous with bean sauce or tomato-y sauce (don’t think Italian food, think a can of condensed tomato sauce with a ton of water). Now for my favorite… special meals. These come, very, very, infrequently but they are amazing nights when they do happen. In the village it’s either a pasta night (we eat with forks not spoons) or peanut butter rice. The pasta is cooked with oil (not olive oil, think vegetable oil) and served possibly with onions. Peanut butter rice, however, is my favorite dish, and I’m still trying to figure out what it’s called and if ANYONE outside of my host family eats it. It’s basically rice mixed with Senegalese peanut butter (which isn’t as sweet as US peanut butter). It comes out looking like a risotto kind of and is AMAZING. Finally, in special meals, I’ll include whatever it is that PCVs make for themselves on their gas’ in their rooms. Scary, I know, but I’m sure I’ll have some good recipes by the end of two years.

In other, unrelated to food, news, I have only one more full day at the center then it’s back to the village for 10 days. I’m really not looking forward to this village time but will be happen when it’s over (because then I’ll have only 7 village days left ever). Other than that, tech sessions have been going well, we learned about feasibility studies today. I’m still not sure what I’m going to be doing in Bambey but the more I learn about composting the more it might be a possibility. My, brief, understanding of it now is that I wouldn’t be doing any composting, I would be working with the city to set up the business of composting in the town. Who knows… I have a while to figure it all out. Epic thanksgiving plans are already underway (I need a holiday to look forward to!) so I’m sure that will end well once I get to that point.

Expect one last blog tomorrow before I head to the village Saturday.

A prochain,
KO