Follow The Gruddas

According to what I read this week about the history of supermarkets, Kankan has almost caught up with the late 1800's. Hopefully this will help you understand not only what we go through to feed ourselves (ease of food preparation is at an all-time high here) but what the 20-odd career missionaries here have been doing for years.

Chili: it was about the easiest thing I could think of. I'm pretty sure our cookbook at home has it in the 20 minutes or less section. Here, not so much...

To get the meat for your chili you'll need to walk the half hour to the market in town (or catch a ride with another missionary, or say a prayer and ride on the back of a taxi moto- it's exactly what it sounds like). Beef will be hacked up while you wait, but you need to be there before 10 am when the meat begins to...ripen. Your meat will go in a plastic bag and you'll still have to trim and dress it at home. Borrow a hand-crank meat grinder and you've got ground beef.

While you were in town, you remembered to buy fresh tomatoes to bleach, rinse, cut and mash because canned tomatoes are not really available. Tomato paste, however, is everywhere-make sure the can is not dented or it will probably break your can-opener. You also would have bought fresh onions. We're assuming you grabbed some chili powder on your way through Bamako because we haven't seen it here yet.

Beans (Doug, you can skip this): You would have bought dried beans last week (or at least the day before) so you could soak them overnight. There are usually black beans, after that you're free to experiment. Again, canned beans are a thing of the future here. Since your beans were soaked, now you just need to pressure cook them and you can start combining ingredients. 

Preparation is normal from this point assuming you're good with matches, can light the stove and haven't run out of propane otherwise you may have to scrounge-

Subway is no longer your backup plan.

As far as serving the food, you won't have cheese unless you had a cooler when leaving Bamako and brought it with you. You'll still need to shred it yourself. At $10 a pound (a little less than a day's salary-for one of us, not Guineans), you may want to pass on that anyways. If you wanted sour cream, you'll have to substitute homemade yogurt which you would need to start about 9 hours in advance. It's pretty good, we made our first batch today. Corn chips are also not available.

After you've finished eating, you'll light the stove and heat water for dishwashing, and put the leftover chili in a tupperware to cool to room temperature before putting it in the solar fridge. If this was lunch, you'll need to start dinner pretty soon, don't sit down.

Bon appetit.

-Brandon