Lunchtime in Tanzania

Welcome to my workspace in Tanzania at about 1:30 each afternoon:


This is what I had for lunch about half the time I was in Tanzania (roughly two months). Order "local food" and get some wali nyama, or "rice beef" for those of you who don't speak Swahili. The "office boy" would take the orders at about 10 am, gather up all the office tupperware, and make a run to the corner grilled meat place.

The rice was, in some ways, the star of the show. Tanzanians love their rice -- it's the largest producer in East Africa -- and they specifically love their rice. Very fresh, and very aromatic. It puts even the best stuff on our grocery shelves to shame.

Meat quality varied greatly -- sometimes the beef was excellently seasoned, sometimes really bland, sometimes very bony and gristly, sometimes very lean. Also in the pink tupperware are beans and greens, both of which were pretty consistently okay, except for the one time that the beans tasted smoky, but not in a good way...more like the cook accidentally mistook the bean pot for an ashtray. Extra beans on the side.

To wash it all down there was Stoney Tangawizi, a soft drink only found in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. Tangawizi means ginger in Swahili, and it basically tasted like liquid powdered ginger -- not a ginger ale, but not quite a ginger beer like I've experienced before. Enjoy some pictures below of me enjoying some while waiting for the ferry to take me back from Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam. Also you'll see the Kilimanjaro brand drinking water bottle that I was reusing.

Perhaps best of all, the total cost was 3000 Tanzanian Shillings., or a little less than $2. It'd only be 2500 TSH without the soft drink.

Uganda

I spent a week in Uganda for work, during which the most convenient lunch option was a local food buffet just down the road.

Back row: Stewed beef, Beans, Greens
Middle: Peanut sauce (or groundnut sauce, as they would say there)
Front: Taro, Ugali, Matooke
Not pictured: Rice (it's covered up by all the stuff on top)

So what are these exotic blobs of ugali and matooke, you ask?

Ugali is made from finely ground maize meal. Think polenta with all the branding savvy that Africa has to offer. It's the staple food across much of Africa, going by names like nsima in Zambia and Malawi or fufu in West Africa. I've also had it made with cassava flour and still called ugali (in Rwanda). Honestly, it's not particularly appealing -- it tends to be very bland, but it fills an otherwise undernourished stomach well.

Matooke, while not a whole lot more interesting to the palate, is a lot more interesting culturally. It's essentially mashed up bananas or plantains -- they're somewhere in between what we find on our grocery store produce departments, slightly sweet by still ultimately just a big glob of starch -- and really only eaten in Uganda. Bananas are the traditional staple food of Uganda, which I think is unique in the world. Rwanda and Burundi are also heavily dependent on bananas, but neither are identified with them as wholeheartedly as Uganda is.

Both ugali and matooke are normally eaten by hand -- you pull off a little (or not so little) piece of it and flatten it out a bit to pick up a chunk of something or make a little scoop to gather up some sauce.

Overall this was alright, pretty good by African standards.

1-Up Hunting

I went mushrooming for the first time: chanterelles in the bay area on Saturday with Duncan. Tilden is over-hunted because of all the Berkeley foodies, so we went out to Sibley and filled a backpack, then out to Redwoods and filled it again. How far off the path had we gone? We found a pristine pull-tab era Budweiser can.

That night we cooked up a slamming pasta fungi (with chard from the garden) for 9 and Duncan still had 15 pounds (clean) left to sell to a restaurant (whose name I won't drop here). He got $11/lb on Sunday morning. Whole Foods was selling them for $22, but I doubt they got them from a couple of random dudes who cleaned them with their mini Swiss Army knife keychain and had them in a backpack they may or may not have fell on once while sliding down a slippery hill.

Slicing the mushrooms made the kitchen smell like peppery apricots, and browning them alone smelled so complex you'd think we were cooking with dozens of ingredients. Now I need to learn about Chicagoland mushrooming.

Butter, Beef, Bunnies

Cheesehead burgers, with about a half cup of fresh local butter at Solly's Grille, outside of Milwaukee.


















After which we enjoyed the tour of the Sprecher brewery down the street. With a half dozen varieties of sodas (including their famous root beer) in addition to their half dozen beers on tap, there were plenty of families in attendance.
There was even an Easter bunny taking pictures with the kids. Eleanor thought Drew and I should take a pic to send out as a "Save the Date" for Thanksgiving 2009. As we posed with the bunny, brews in hand, the little kid you see in the foreground ran up and posed with us. After the picture was taken his dad asked him what he was doing and the kid burst into tears. Despite our efforts to reassure him, the kid was inconsolable.


We ended up sampling beers all afternoon and I missed my fantasy baseball draft. Worth it.

Sausage Fest 2008

Thanks to the less-than-competent IT guy at our firm, who deleted all the photos on my phone the last time he updated it, this beaut is the lone exhibit of the inaugural Sausagefest from May-ish 2008.

The 2008 crop yielded italian, brat, bockwurst, lamb and buffalo bleu chicken. Sam set the standard by "sampling" at least 8 links that night. Lamb (topped with a dill cucumber cucumber sauce) and brats were the clear winners, with the buffalo bleu being tasty, but a bit dry from lack of dark meat.

The Fargo Trail

Nothing new for Peter, but here are a few scenes from our drive from Minneapolis to Fargo. The night before we had Jucy Lucys with Phelan -- we were hoping to eat them at three different places, but unfortunately the kitchens at the bars where they're served closed at 10. Sadly no pictures, as the batteries in Peter's camera died.

Flapjacks in Brainerd:


I slammed on the brakes when I saw this sign:


The elusive broasted chicken:



We started driving and eating, but then I insisted on stopping so I could focus on eating, even though we were running late (hence Peter documenting the time):



The chicken was pretty good. As I recall, the cartel that controls the broasting equipment promises that it'll be juicier than your average fried chicken, which I'd say it was. The breast was particularly juicy. The broasting seal also promises a special spice/breading blend, which I found unremarkable.

Post WingFest

Starting with a classic: Sam at Margie's, WingFest VIP pass still around his neck.