My Day

By about 5 o’clock everyday my body starts screaming at me, “If you don’t lay down you are going to regret it!” And it’s right. When I resist I usually end up spending quality time with the toilet bowl. But, it drives me crazy to just lay around all night. So tonight I decided to blog. 

We have just moved to Geita to stay! We are sooooo excited to finally be here. The lady who sells limes at the market (and really good eggs with yellow yolks! Hard to find here) I can actually go talk to her again tommorow, and the next day, and as many days as I want, because we finally live here! We are currently staying in a house that the Groens are renting, but they won’t be here until October, so it’s been just the two of us for a few days and tommorow the Harrison’s will join us. We are looking for our own place, which is easier now that we are here, and settling in. I’m sure some may wonder what exactly “settling in” involves so I thought I’d tell you about my day. This is not neccesarily a typical day. It certainly doesn’t include all of the "settling in" things. In fact it took place mostly in the kitchen. But the kitchen is a BIG part of life here. 

The day started with oatmeal- a good source of whole grain in a country where that is an accomplishment. Next I washed yesterday’s dishes. I’ve been doing them in the morning because I don’t feel well enough in the evenings. By the time that was done, I was ready for second beakfast so I made cinnamon-less (we hadn’t found cinnamon yet) cinnamon rolls with some dough I made yesterday. I also made simple sugar for the lemonade I would finish later. Carson headed out to see the district commisioner as I headed to the market. We are looking at renting a house from him. At the market I got limes, lemons, and eggs. That was all I needed to get started on a few projects back in the kitchen. However, when I returned there was no water which makes most anything in the kitchen a challenge. Carson returned pretty soon because the DC was not in his office today, so we both headed to the market and a couple of little dukas (stores) to finish the day’s shopping. When we returned there was still no water, but we were getting pretty hungry so we busted out the Dasani (not the cheapest way to wash your hands, but it will work in a pinch) I made an attempt at mac n cheese that wasn’t half bad considering the lack of Velvetta, rolls that were awful because I used all whole grain flour in the dough, and Carson made the FRIED CHICKEN! We used a couple of chicken breasts we picked up in Rwanda. Around here it’s the whole chicken or nothing! Carson makes the best fried chicken I have ever tasted and I have been craving some good chicken. 

After lunch Carson went out to a village with the German missionary and I was back in the kitchen working on a key lime pie. Unfortunately the sweetened condensed milk I made yesterday was hard as a rock and I didn’t have enouch ingredients to try again. I started googling lemon pie recipes and found one that didn’t call for sweetened condensed milk, so I gave it a try except with limes. I made the graham cracker crust using Tennis biscuits, a nice South African substitute. 

I tried to whip up some Dream Whip topping, but it never really whipped. I won’t have an electric mixer until the container gets here. I ended up just adding the dream whip mixture to the rest of the pie filling. It actually turned out ok. Definitely edible.

 I finished my lemonade. All the lemon and lime squeezing was done by hand because the juicer is also on the container. Next I washed dishes again. I needed a few dirty things and once you heat up water you want it to be worth it so I washed quite a bit of stuff. Then I started on dinner- Supper Corn Chowder. The only challenging part of this was the cream of potato soup, but I found a recipe online that worked great. By the time Carson got home I was crumbling up the bacon. The Supper Corn Chowder was by far my most successful thing in the kitchen today. It tasted like home. Now I'm just laying here, pondering how much my belly has started to pop in the last week...

And what’s in store for tommorow? Well I know how it will start...