Farm to Table

I consider myself a decent cook.  I have had to cook for myself for a while now, having worked a few jobs in food prep and food services and having lived on my own, and I still continued to cook quite a bit the last couple of years when Audrey has been working hard at school.  She always cooks when she can and helps out in whatever way is asked. She just has been busy the last couple years, so we have shared in the cooking.  I would also consider myself a decent backpacking chef, although I may not make fresh biscuits and sausage, or pork chops while on the trail, I have never gone to bed hungry, and usually come up with quite the assortment of concoctions to feed and please my taste buds.

However, cooking in Kenya has proven a bit more challenging, so I thought I would theorize some of the reasons why that is and walk you through our typical meals in the bush.  The factors are (as I believe): availability, storage, planning, and equipment.  Let's start by combining planning and availability.  In America, one typically writes out their menu for the week, goes to the store, picks up the items, checks out, and goes home.  Sometimes people will comparison shop or go to a second store, but rarely does anyone spend more than a couple hours in their grocery shopping unless they just enjoy it (like my father, he lives in the grocery store).  But if you are like Audrey (who hates it) you plan out your list, wait for the perfect time (when no one is at the store) and then you speed through like the Indy 500 (unfortunately for her this means going back at least once more in the week because something was overlooked or forgotten).

But in Kenya, in the bush, you plan.  The closest "store" is made of mud and is about twenty minutes away and sells (on most days, if they happen to have in stock) local produce (tomatoes, potatoes, onions, cabbage), flour, rice, maybe eggs, sugar, and tea.  So this is helpful if you happen to run short of something, or are cooking a soley flour and rice diet.  The next closest store is close to an hour away (down a very bumpy, rutted road, and driving through a few waist deep streams).  In this town, Narosura, you can find wash buckets, cookware, soap, butter, eggs, bread, clothing, phones and a variety of other things.  There is even a local market on Wednesday, however, sadly enough, no samosas (my favorite Kenyan food, sort of like a ground beef triangle egg roll with spices and onion).  However, if you are really low on stuff the closest actual grocery store is 2.5 hours away in a town named Narok, down a road that I have not yet driven without getting a flat, or worse (but that is for another post).  Here you can find some meat (butchered and canned corn beef), pasta, pasta sauce (although not Ragu), other sauces such as soy and Worchestershire, oatmeal, muesli (not as good as the granola), samosas, large jugs of water, a variety of fruit such as apples and tangerines, juice, and chocolate.  Alas, if you need those harder to find items such as granola, dried fruit, Ragu, a wider variety of canned and smoked meat, and other supplies you go to Nairobi 4.5 hours away (we've held off on this one).  

We have been trying to plan our shopping excursions at least a week and a half a part, which means lots of planning, and using every bit of our supply before we get more.  This means making a menu, diagrams are drawn, routes are planned, schedules are set, spreadsheets are made (my friend Tim would appreciate this), and money is acquired (you have to carry enough for all you groceries, and any possible repairs your car may need along the way, and there's not always a good place to acquire money, so this too takes planning.)  Now that we have discovered the closer small store we may be visiting it weekly for fresher veggies and making meals of things we can find more readily.  This also means stockpiling. I bought three times the amount of pasta and sauce that we had last time in case we got in a tough spot. We like pasta, a lot (right now that is)...  

Another big factor in cooking and shopping is storage.  There are some things that last forever like pasta and rice and flour.  However, within four days bread is molded and the potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, and peppers are withering and wilting fast.  With our nomadic lifestyle, we have not yet acquired a fridge or a way to cool things. This means no real milk or cheese for Audrey, no meat for me besides canned or smoked (which is a big deal since my foodgroups back home were cow, pig, and chicken).  So far we have found some "salami" in Nairobi and canned corned beef in Narok (2.5 hours away).  We do usually have eggs though, so I am thankful for that.  Also, surprisingly, if eggs are never refrigerated, they can last without being refrigerated for a long time.  You can't do many things left over, that we have figured out yet, since most food doesn't last more than a day at room temperature.  So we usually only cook one big hot prepared meal a day for lunch. That way if there is something small left, we can try to eat it at dinner and we don't go to bed on a full stomach, which I hear is unhealthy and would probably make us the only fat Kenyans. 

Although a lot of the items in stores may be similar to what is in the states, there is a fair bit that is not there too, and without refridgeration this cuts it down more.  Think about planning your menu without using anything out of the fridge. How many meals a day could you make? If it were me in the states, maybe one.  Another reason a lot of my meals from back home are ruled out is because we have no oven.  Cooking on a gas top burner (ours is literally a propane tank with a burner coming out of the top, and a metal ring that sits on top of the propane tank that a pot can sit on) is harder than I thought. It requires patience, a steady hand to inch the gas down to a setting where the flame does not blow out, or not so high that you charcoal your food.  It seems that most time the gas top has three settings: off, hot, and hades.  So suffice it to say, we have burned a lot of meals starting off, and had a hard time cooking things that take time and patience such as rice and beans (a staple here) well.  Although in time we have learned to inch down the burner, use lots of oil, and add water as necessary.  Also, because I used to be such an instant chef back home (not much do I make from scratch, mainly because as my old boss used to say (ain't no one got time for that).  I do like fresh from scratch food, but I what I like better is food that tastes almost from scratch that takes half the time and effort. It is also hard to cook some of these things without the instructions on the back of a package I am so used to reading and then ignoring back home.  

This all being said I have enjoyed relearning to cook, and to make new things here, and none of this is meant as a complaint, just an exaggerated explanation of what our cooking entails in Kenya.  Our current menu consist of (for our "cold" or quick meals of breakfast and dinner): egg sandwiches, eggy toast (nicknamed almost French toast), toast, jam sandwich, tomato and butter sandwich, salami sandwich, granola (when we can find salami and granola), oatmeal (hopefully with dried fruit when we can find some), apple sauce, guacamole, and eggy flour (close to crepes).  For lunch, our hot prepared meal, we have hashbrowns, and an egg, potato, tomato concoction I made up, rice, lentils, onion and peppers, rice, onion, garlic, tomato, and potato, corned beef, cabbage, and potato (recipe still in progress), and flatbread garlic chipates.  Over the last three weeks our cooking has greatly improved, and thanks to friends sending us some new ideas we have some new recipes in the works.  Although we are still always trying to find more variety as we find new recipes and ingredients (with these conditions aforementioned in mind).  So if you have any ideas, good recipes, or can think of something we are overlooking, shoot us an email.  We would love to hear from you, or to bounce ideas around with you!  Thank you so much!