Rolf's return from Addis several weeks ago brought an abundance of veggies and fruit. Now all that is remaining until we go to Addis at the end of December are several wrinkled carrots, a dozen wrinkled beets that I need to use, one bowl of tomatoes that need to be eaten or processed, one avocado, a dozen oranges and lemons whose skin is hard but are still filled with juice, and our staple potatoes, pumpkin, onions and garlic.
So ... we do a lot of cooking with potatoes and pumpkin. This causes an extra challenge for my 2 children who do not like potatoes and pumpkin. How do you disguise these textures? It is a challenge since they even notice pumpkin pureed and put into pancakes, cake or cookies!
We eat a lot of legumes – white beans have just been harvested by the Gumuz and are among our favourites. We have 3 okra plants that Joel has grown on our back porch along with some spinach. All the rest of our vegetables were consumed by a rat or bushbaby since we still have some gaps in the screen.
I will include a few recipes soon and if anyone wants to send me a favourite Christmas recipe or two that would be super. My cookbooks are few and there's no access to the internet so I could use some ideas. They will have to be chocolate and nut free since these ingredients are not available to us. Icing sugar is only available if I make it myself by grinding our unrefined sugar and I may be able to borrow some molasses from the neighbours (none available in Addis last time). Needless to say one has to be creative in this environment.
And when I might be tempted to complain, I just think of the Gumuz. Their supplies are even more limited than ours as they eat only what they grow.
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