Cooking Substitutions and Thanksgiving in Tanzania

Local produce brings great inspiration:


When the recipe calls for something from the list on the left, I use what's on the right:

One can chicken broth = boil a chicken, save the water
Canned pumpkin = peel, scrape, boil, and mash a pumpkin
Tortilla chips = make tortillas from scratch and then cut up and bake
Sour cream = maziwa mgando (clotted milk we can buy in town) strained through a tea towel
Cream cheese = maziwa mgando, strained longer through the teal towel
Butter = Blue Band margarine, the butter of the third world!
Asparagus = green pepper
Artichoke = green pepper
Broccoli = green pepper
Red bell pepper = green pepper
Celery = sadly, nothing else will do
Pecans, walnuts, almonds = somehow, peanuts just don't fit the bill

This is definitely the short list. Substituting occurs daily in my kitchen, and as they say, necessity is the mother of invention. It's true!

Although meals take significantly longer to prepare here, we've learned that some American friends think our African foods are enviable! While I was moaning about having to scrub piles of dirt from potatoes, wash the chicken crud from the still-warm eggs and boil the still-warm milk from neighboring cows, our friends back home are paying through their noses to eat locally grown produce, organic eggs and "raw" milk!

So although on furlough I loved all the easy, prepared, frozen, and processed foods in the grocery stores in the States, I've learned to appreciate our raw, organic, and fresh foods in Tanzania. Plus, for the first time ever I have a vegetable garden with lettuce, pumpkin, and corn!

Thanksgiving this year will have (among other things) pumpkin pie from the pumpkin I bought at the market yesterday, chicken from the Catholic retreat center down by the lake, stuffing from the bread baked in my kitchen Tuesday, and cranberry sauce from ... a jar (which we found in Mwanza, a city 3 hours away)!

Our Thanksgiving turkey from 2007. Turkeys are very rare, hard to buy, extremely expensive, a lot of work, and not all that tasty, so this year, we're stickin' with chicken!

As always, so much to be thankful for! But do enjoy some pecan pie with us in your thoughts this year!