Their other staple that every Kenyan woman must know how to make is ugali. If a woman gets married and cannot make ugali she is sent back to her family until she learns how. Ugali is simply maize (corn) flour added to boiling water and stirred to make a kind of dough (think grainy playdough). You eat ugali with your hands and it goes with a variety of different things including kachumbari (sliced tomatoes, onions and peppers drowned in the juice of a lime), skuma (boiled and seasoned kale – like spinach), cabbage, and some kind of meat – we’ve had fish.
I had to prove my worthiness as a wife! My attempt at ugali.
The best meal according to a Kenyan is nyama choma – translated literally it’s grilled animal, but it just means any kind of meat. They are not picky about their meat and it often includes or mostly consists of bone and fat.
Another great Kenyan dish is pilau. It is rice with certain spices that give it an orange color and nyama choma. We’ve been told that it is common to slice a banana in with it and when we tried it we were very surprised that it was very good.
They eat everything with chapati. Chapati is like a thick tortilla, but more flavorful. They like to tear it into bite-size pieces and cover it with beans – either pinto beans or a kind of bean soup that tastes like lentils. The chapati soaks up the juices and it’s really good.
They love to drink hot things (tea, coffee, cocoa). There is a saying in Swahili, “When it’s hot, take it hot. When it’s cold, take it cold.” Well, it’s never cold, so we’ve been hard pressed to find anything cold! We haven’t tried anything we really didn’t like which has been a pleasant surprise! The abundant and very sweet bananas and other fruits have been a highlight, and good for us too.
A passion fruit! We had only had the juice until we got here.
1 comment:
sound like you are not starving...
good job to the wifey did you pass the test? Or do you get to go back home?
Love,
Aunt Vick
Post a Comment