Cooking in Uganda

Hello Everyone!

Because a large portion of the day is spent preparing dinner, I thought I’d write a little bit about how it is done and what foods are readily available.

 

Each week Trish and I make a trip to the market to shop for the week. The market is located in the middle of town and all of the booths are outside. Some of the vendors have a covering overhead of tin or an umbrella, and some are spread out on the ground on a large tarp.

Everything imaginable is found there such as transistor radios, shoes, recycled clothing, plastic dishes, mugs, towels and hats.

As you proceed toward the rear of the market (and follow your nose), you will find fresh fish, sides of beef or goat hanging from hooks, live chickens, fresh eggs, dried beans, rice, loaves of bread, tomatoes, eggplant, carrots, onions, cabbage, potatoes, bananas, plantains (matoke), mangoes, papayas, pineapples, sugar cane, lemons, avocados, and cucumbers. It truly is a sensory overload!

 

Trish has a few favorite vendors that she has been buying from and has introduced me to them. One of the vendors is an elderly gentleman that always greets us with a bright smile. After making our usual purchase of carrots, bananas or lemons - he usually gives us a complimentary mango.

Our next stop is from a tall soft-spoken man who always has nice tomatoes, onions and potatoes. We tell him if we want a ½  or a full kilo, which he weighs on a scale that is counter balanced by weights.

Our next stop is usually for fresh eggs.  Sometimes when we approach the vendor we find him napping, but he lifts his head as soon as he hears us say the word “eggs”. They are sold individually and put very carefully into small clear plastic bags which we hold delicately for the trip home.

When you reach home, you can’t just put the produce away in the fridge like you would if you just returned from the Piggly Wiggly. There is a process for each item to ensure that it is properly cleaned. If you want to be able to eat a vegetable raw, like a sliced tomato or cucumber, it needs to soak in a large bowl of bleach water for a few minutes to clean the skin. If you are going to cook the vegetable, a good rinse and a spray of bleach water is sufficient. The eggs too have to be rinsed because they often come with feathers and other unidentified matter stuck to the outside….you know they’re fresh. So after the process, we are ready to cook for the week and have only spent about $12 total. Unless we buy meat from Kampala after a trip down for work, or if we go to a restaurant in town, most of our meals our vegetarian. Soup, stir fry, beans and rice, avocado and tomato salad, and pasta are typical meals. Dairy products are a treat. We will bring cheese and yogurt sometimes from Kampala and ration it out as long as we can. Another key element to a successful meal in Masindi is making sure you have most of your prep work done before the sun goes down at 7pm in case you don’t have power that evening. It’s easy to cut your fingers if you are chopping vegetables by headlamp or candlelight. Also, you want to make sure you don’t overbuy for the week or have too many leftovers because you can’t rely on your fridge to preserve food for long.

            Should you decide to go out for supper and take a night off from cooking, there are 3 places which we frequent. One is Masindi Hotel, which is a quaint colonial hotel which offers a nice atmosphere, delicious Indian and Chinese dishes, as well as local food options. The second is another hotel owned by a British ex-pat and it has a farily extensive menu with Indian, local, and American dishes. You can have goat, lentils, hamburgers, club sandwiches, fish and chips, chicken curry, etc… The third is owned by the same ex-pat and it’s more of a local place, although it’s called Travelers. They have really good fajitas.

            If you want something on the run, you can pick up street food. There is always a slight risk in doing this, but if all goes well, you can enjoy a delicious snack. Typical street food options are Chapatis (fried flat bread), Rolex (flat omelet rolled up into a Chapati), grilled ear of maize (enjoyed if you have strong teeth), and meat on a stick (usually goat???).

            We have enjoyed many local meals when invited to dine with friends. You can always count on a very similar menu each time. These items consist of, matoke (steamed plantains cooked in banana leaves), cassava (boiled root with little to no flavor), millet “bread” (sticky dough made from millet flour), dodo (dark leafy greens), meat stew (goat, beef, or chicken), rice, beans, G-nut sauce (thin purple peanut sauce), cabbage, and sometimes whole fish. Most enjoy this meal without using any utensils. They use the sticky matoke or millet bread to soak up the rest. If you are invited to breakfast, you will most likely be served thick slices of bread with a thin smear of butter, boiled eggs, fresh bananas or mangos, and large mugs of tea that are 80% hot fresh milk a few large scoops of sugar, and a little tea. All of these meals are prepared with a lot of love and hard work. They have to hand gather fire wood or buy charcoal to heat their pots to cook everything. They cook out in the yard, under a tin shed, or in a separate cooking room. It takes hours of preparation and they find a lot of joy in hosting guests. It is said that a family is blessed if they host visitors, so we try to always accept their invitations.

            Needless to say, we are not going hungry here. Everything we eat is extremely fresh and almost nothing is processed. Below are some pictures of the market and a local “grocery store”. Chow!