Food for Stephanie

From Stephanie Clarke's comment: "So for the next blog, give it up...what is the most unique thing you have eaten so far? And what have you eaten that reminded you the most of home?"

In response to Stephanie:

I regretfully haven't had an opportunity to try any truly obscure dishes here - primarily due to availability. Mice are out of season, and I missed out on the flying termite snack, after dousing the lot of them with RAID. However, I did make a point of trying out the mainstay of the Malawian diet - maize - white corn. They remove the outer kernel and prepare a dish called sema, which looks like mashed potatoes. It is quite bland, but you eat it with "relish." Relish is any type of vegetable, such as cabbage, shredded, and cooked as an accompaniment. I had sema once in a local restaurant, and then again on Monday, at the home of a villager. In the home-based version, we first washed our hands in water from a basin, then ate the dish with our fingers, then washed again. You break off a chunk and kind of dip it and grab relish, because sema itself is kind of bland.

Both times, I had sema with chicken. The first time, I was presented with a body part that must have originated from the rib cage of the skinniest chicken in Malawi. In quantity of meat, it reminded me of the time I cooked and attempted to eat a Merganzer duck that Brandon's father, Bailey, a teen at the time, had shot. Apparently, you don't eat Merganzer. The second piece of chicken, served in the village home, had slightly more meat, and it was tasty, but you needed powerful incisors and a will of steel in order to separate flesh from bone.

Apparently Malawians like "local chicken" rather than "soft chicken" - the latter is favoured by Westerners such as myself. I assume the soft chickens are penned and fed grain - the local chickens wander around and peck at whatever they can find. As a matter of fact, a scrawny white one wandered into the home on Monday while we were eating, apparently unconcerned that we were chewing on its neighbour.

Here is my friend Nancy, eating sema at the restaurant - I made it through one scoop of sema:

As for familiar home-style foods - I am currently digesting orange Fanta, lightly-salted Lays potato chips and a quantity of Cadbury plain chocolate which I am too ashamed to divulge. This qualified as dinner tonight.


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