texmex-senegal.

{ April 7, 2010 @ 1:49 pm } · { Uncategorized }

The kitchen in my training homestay is a cement room with a place for a fire in it and no ventilation.  And we cooked in it despite the looks of disbelief when I told my family “mnin Bakary nin Vieux ke siimon tabi, Amerik Tabiro.”  We are going to cook dinner, American food.

We took an adventure to the “Toubab Store” which is a supermarket with coveted items like tortillas and ice cream.  Once we were finished being amazed by the choices we had before us (and the price of the goods imported from Europe, ten bucks for a box of cereal), we went to work on planning our delicious meal for my family.

We decided not to stray too far from Senegalese cuisine because I did not want to cause any loose doodies in my compound (or vomiting, like what happens when a ten year old makes a two year old chuck oral rehydration solution…oops).  We decided to go for a texmex-style meal with rice, beans, veggies (including avocado!) and chicken.  If all else failed we were psyched about getting nutrients and protein into our bods.

We had Baba start the fire for us, and Ado help with the rice but otherwise, we cut veggies outside (in our hands, no cutting boards of surfaces), while Vieux/David cooked the chicken in the suffocating hot chicken after we almost broke the window that we found out was not to be opened…oops again.

We served the rice, veggie, chicken bean mixture Senegalese-style in a big communal bowl.  Us toubabs found it delish, but one nice thing about Senegalese culture is that they would never say if they did not like something.  But this is also problematic because I have really no idea if they truly liked it.  I think they were really intrigued by the tortillas.