Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Lula Pancakes- cross cultural experiences in Moz
Feliz Natal everyone! Eli and I have had a really busy last two weeks! We had 6 people staying in our house from Christmas (the four other PC Nampula people and our friends Jessie and Marie from the southern gaza province- Jessie is Rob´s cousin for those of you who don´t know! They took a 60 hour bus trip to come see us). That was a great but hectic time- and we finished by taking a trip to the Ilha de Moçambique, which is a world heritage site and very beautiful. We also spent Christmas eve at Fernao Velhoso, a pretty beach near us. Its been hard to remember that it really is christmas time!! Its so hot and tropical here that it just doesn´t seem right.
Let me step back and explain the title of the post. Eli and I recently made pancakes and since we didn´t have butter we used oil. What we didn´t know is that a woman who had cooked for us the day before had used that same oil to fry lula´s (octopus) and then returned some of it to the bottle. So we had a little bit of a surprise when that batch of pancakes had an overwhelming fishy taste! Now we only use butter for our pancakes. Speaking of cooking, we bought an oven just before christmas-its like a giant toaster oven, but we can do chicken rotisserie style in it. We used it to make cookies, brownies, and a mango crisp (apple´s are too expensive here, and mangos were better anyway!). Thats been nice and should help eli and I to cook some more food that we´re used to. (we still have a small coal burner in case the power goes out).
For Christmas eve we made pasta with a mango tomato sauce, that turned out really well- (like a normal tomatoe sauce but with mango chunks cooked in). For Christmas we made a seafood scampi with shrimp and lula that turned out excellently. The day after we went to ilha, although we didn´t stay long. We plan on going back for new years. Classes don´t start until Feb. 1st, so we have time to travel, although teachers meetings and planning start 2 weeks before that.
Eli and I are getting more integrated into our community- we´ve had some long conversations with some of the people here, and even got two stools as christmas presents, but haven´t made any real ´friends´ yet, because of the lack of time. Still, things are good and we hope to get an empregada and dog soon... the dog may take a while. Also, I got accepted to New York Medical College but I am going to decline. To answer Kerry´s question we are sleeping with mosquitoe nets (although eli thinks they come through the holes in the net), but in our apartment bugs aren´t bad. In other places they are. I´m taking pictures but don´t have a digital camera. I will have to mail them home and then ask my dad to see if he can scan and post those. Also, the whole moz10 group is posting pictures on www.ofoto.com with the username mozten@gmail.com and the password peacecorps1 but I dont know what they´re putting there.
Mpaka meloo (until tomorrow in Macua, but more like next week)!
-paul
Let me step back and explain the title of the post. Eli and I recently made pancakes and since we didn´t have butter we used oil. What we didn´t know is that a woman who had cooked for us the day before had used that same oil to fry lula´s (octopus) and then returned some of it to the bottle. So we had a little bit of a surprise when that batch of pancakes had an overwhelming fishy taste! Now we only use butter for our pancakes. Speaking of cooking, we bought an oven just before christmas-its like a giant toaster oven, but we can do chicken rotisserie style in it. We used it to make cookies, brownies, and a mango crisp (apple´s are too expensive here, and mangos were better anyway!). Thats been nice and should help eli and I to cook some more food that we´re used to. (we still have a small coal burner in case the power goes out).
For Christmas eve we made pasta with a mango tomato sauce, that turned out really well- (like a normal tomatoe sauce but with mango chunks cooked in). For Christmas we made a seafood scampi with shrimp and lula that turned out excellently. The day after we went to ilha, although we didn´t stay long. We plan on going back for new years. Classes don´t start until Feb. 1st, so we have time to travel, although teachers meetings and planning start 2 weeks before that.
Eli and I are getting more integrated into our community- we´ve had some long conversations with some of the people here, and even got two stools as christmas presents, but haven´t made any real ´friends´ yet, because of the lack of time. Still, things are good and we hope to get an empregada and dog soon... the dog may take a while. Also, I got accepted to New York Medical College but I am going to decline. To answer Kerry´s question we are sleeping with mosquitoe nets (although eli thinks they come through the holes in the net), but in our apartment bugs aren´t bad. In other places they are. I´m taking pictures but don´t have a digital camera. I will have to mail them home and then ask my dad to see if he can scan and post those. Also, the whole moz10 group is posting pictures on www.ofoto.com with the username mozten@gmail.com and the password peacecorps1 but I dont know what they´re putting there.
Mpaka meloo (until tomorrow in Macua, but more like next week)!
-paul
# posted by Paul and Eli @ 6:36 AM 
