The Malawian Cheese steak

Some of you have asked about food. It's not bad. Unfortunately, my favorite meal, breakfast, is the most lacking. I am sufficiently happy with the coffee and tea(which is actually made here in Malawi. It's one of their main exports, along with tobacco. I am happy to report I don't see a lot of people smoking though).

We are supplied lunch at the office which is great. It is either rice or chips (french fries) with beef or chicken and vegetables. A staple here is called snima, which is made from maize (corn) and has the consistency similar to that of cream of wheat. The taste is very bland but they always eat it with sauce, which they call relish.

We make our own dinner. Sam has blossomed into a wonderful cook, and I keep threatening to tell his wife and he keeps threatening me back. Being Indian, he makes a lot of Indian dishes which I love (but generally burn my mouth, though he tries to accommodate my bland Irish/Polish taste buds). Since there is a sizable Indian population here, ingredients are readily available.

Every day on my way home, I pass fresh fruits & vegetables: eggplant(my favorite!), tomatoes, onions, carrots, lettuce, green beans, sweet potatoes and regular potatoes. They are apples, oranges and avocados, sometimes mangoes. There is also okra and cassava, which I don't know how to make.

Needless to say, we make a lot of eggplant. Sam decided we should open a restaurant called the eggplant since we have made so many different varieties of it. His favorite was a rendition on the Philly cheese steak he saw on Emeril. (This is much better than his latest idea that we fund a war to take out Mugabe.)

We also buy pasta, eggs,cheese,yogurt,chicken, ground beef and bacon from the grocery store. Sam also gets sausage & lunch meat. He came home one day with this huge grin on his face and held out this deli meat with olives in it (of all things). He thought I would be so happy and made an equally big confused face when I explained that I don't like deli meat. "But, I thought all Americans liked lunch meat!", he exclaimed. Another American myth debunked by yours truly.