Food in Village
At my site, I eat lunch and dinner with my family. I have been cooking breakfast for myself in my backyard--usually millet with peanut butter and honey. The food that my family cooks is pretty similar every day.
For breakfast, they eat a sweet-and-sour porridge made with rice flour called mono. In other parts of Senegal, this same dish is made with millet instead of rice and has yogurt poured over the top of the porridge. I ate the millet and yogurt version of mono a few times at my host family's house in Mbour.
Lunch and dinner are pretty similar. We rotate through a few different meals in a pattern that I have not yet figured out. The base of the meal is either white rice (75% of the time) or corn (the other 25%). There is then a sauce that goes on top of the grain: either peanut sauce called "mafe" or leaf sauce. The peanut sauce is a very thin tan color. It is usually pretty salty; I think the ingredients are just peanuts salt, and spices. Occasionally the mafe has a few little pieces of some sort of leaf in it. Leaf sauce is leaves from one of a couple different plants that have been pounded and mixed with some salt and spices. I am not sure about the nutritional value of leaf sauce, but it is green. Sometimes the two sauces are mixed into one and then poured over the rice. With very few exceptions, this is what I have eaten every day for lunch and dinner during the last three weeks.
My host dad likes his food spicy, so at each meal he puts a scoop of powdered hot pepper in the center of the big bowl for my brothers and I to eat then puts a large amount in his section of the bowl. The food itself is not spicy before adding this pepper, just salty.
I eat around a big bowl with my dad, younger brothers, and my dad's nephew. The kids eat with their hands and the adults eat with spoons. This is not the case in every family, as some adult men eat with their hands. The women in my family, who do the cooking, start eating after they have served us our bowl. I have only seen them eating with their hands so far. I like to eat with my hands sometimes at the training center in Thies, but I think a spoon might be marginally more sanitary, so I'll continue using one at my site for the time being.
It is not unusual for me to eat peanuts 4-5 times a day. I have some peanut butter in my millet every morning, and often peanut sauce for lunch and dinner. Sometimes we snack on peanuts during the mid-morning, sometimes in the early evening, and occasionally we eat a few roasted peanuts after dinner. Every compound has endless amounts of peanuts in their huts that they sometimes offer as a snack if I go visit their compound. These peanuts have usually been dried in the sun. They have a distinctly different taste than the roasted peanuts that are pervasive throughout the US. It took me about a day to get used to the different taste, but now I love them. Roasted peanuts in various forms are also available here, especially in cities and in the market. Peanuts here are always unsalted, whether or not they have been roasted. I don't think I will get tired of them during the next two years.
I have not seen any vegetables (other than leaves) in my meals yet, but I have eaten two bush fruits at my site. Bush fruit is the term for fruit that grows naturally on native trees that have not been planted or taken care of at all by the population. The first is the baobob fruit. I had baobob juice multiple times in Thies and at my first home-stay in Mbour. The fruit is not juicy, but is in the form of a hard powder that is stuck around the seeds. Inside one "fruit" there are hundreds of seeds surrounded by this sweet, acidic, tangy powder. If you eat a lot at one time it can start to hurt your tongue like an acidic pineapple. It is very easy to make juice with baobob fruit because it is already in powder form and just needs to be dissolved in water. The second bush fruit I have tried is called kukuu in Jaxanke. I don't know the English name of the tree yet. This fruit is a little smaller than a ping pong ball, has a thin skin, and light-brown flesh on the inside. If ripe it tastes very sweet and is similar only to another larger fruit that I ate in India last year. If unripe, it is unbearably chalky and must be spit out. I have eaten both the ripe and the unripe version at my site. My younger brother's judgement of which fruits are ripe (he climbs upwards of 15 feet into the tree to pick them) is not always perfect.
For breakfast, they eat a sweet-and-sour porridge made with rice flour called mono. In other parts of Senegal, this same dish is made with millet instead of rice and has yogurt poured over the top of the porridge. I ate the millet and yogurt version of mono a few times at my host family's house in Mbour.
Lunch and dinner are pretty similar. We rotate through a few different meals in a pattern that I have not yet figured out. The base of the meal is either white rice (75% of the time) or corn (the other 25%). There is then a sauce that goes on top of the grain: either peanut sauce called "mafe" or leaf sauce. The peanut sauce is a very thin tan color. It is usually pretty salty; I think the ingredients are just peanuts salt, and spices. Occasionally the mafe has a few little pieces of some sort of leaf in it. Leaf sauce is leaves from one of a couple different plants that have been pounded and mixed with some salt and spices. I am not sure about the nutritional value of leaf sauce, but it is green. Sometimes the two sauces are mixed into one and then poured over the rice. With very few exceptions, this is what I have eaten every day for lunch and dinner during the last three weeks.
My host dad likes his food spicy, so at each meal he puts a scoop of powdered hot pepper in the center of the big bowl for my brothers and I to eat then puts a large amount in his section of the bowl. The food itself is not spicy before adding this pepper, just salty.
I eat around a big bowl with my dad, younger brothers, and my dad's nephew. The kids eat with their hands and the adults eat with spoons. This is not the case in every family, as some adult men eat with their hands. The women in my family, who do the cooking, start eating after they have served us our bowl. I have only seen them eating with their hands so far. I like to eat with my hands sometimes at the training center in Thies, but I think a spoon might be marginally more sanitary, so I'll continue using one at my site for the time being.
It is not unusual for me to eat peanuts 4-5 times a day. I have some peanut butter in my millet every morning, and often peanut sauce for lunch and dinner. Sometimes we snack on peanuts during the mid-morning, sometimes in the early evening, and occasionally we eat a few roasted peanuts after dinner. Every compound has endless amounts of peanuts in their huts that they sometimes offer as a snack if I go visit their compound. These peanuts have usually been dried in the sun. They have a distinctly different taste than the roasted peanuts that are pervasive throughout the US. It took me about a day to get used to the different taste, but now I love them. Roasted peanuts in various forms are also available here, especially in cities and in the market. Peanuts here are always unsalted, whether or not they have been roasted. I don't think I will get tired of them during the next two years.
I have not seen any vegetables (other than leaves) in my meals yet, but I have eaten two bush fruits at my site. Bush fruit is the term for fruit that grows naturally on native trees that have not been planted or taken care of at all by the population. The first is the baobob fruit. I had baobob juice multiple times in Thies and at my first home-stay in Mbour. The fruit is not juicy, but is in the form of a hard powder that is stuck around the seeds. Inside one "fruit" there are hundreds of seeds surrounded by this sweet, acidic, tangy powder. If you eat a lot at one time it can start to hurt your tongue like an acidic pineapple. It is very easy to make juice with baobob fruit because it is already in powder form and just needs to be dissolved in water. The second bush fruit I have tried is called kukuu in Jaxanke. I don't know the English name of the tree yet. This fruit is a little smaller than a ping pong ball, has a thin skin, and light-brown flesh on the inside. If ripe it tastes very sweet and is similar only to another larger fruit that I ate in India last year. If unripe, it is unbearably chalky and must be spit out. I have eaten both the ripe and the unripe version at my site. My younger brother's judgement of which fruits are ripe (he climbs upwards of 15 feet into the tree to pick them) is not always perfect.
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