Eat!

Learning a whole new supermarket system filled with a whole new range of products from around the world has been interesting. I never realized how much I depend on those brands or stores I love in Berkeley--that every time I go to Berkeley Bowl I'll buy their homemade bagels, or pick up some fresh herbs, or peruse the entire aisle of cheese. I buy PG Tips tea and hormone-free Berkeley Farms milk and Classico tomato sauce. On Tuesdays I know which stand at the farmer's market sells the peaches and plums I like best (sweet, not tart), I'll spend ages finding that perfect head of romaine lettuce, and line up for as long as it takes to get Blue Bottle Coffee beans. I'll smile at the guy I buy my honey from and ask the lady who sells beets if she knows who's selling leeks today.

Granted I know I'm spoiled in Berkeley, a food mecca filled with fresh fruit I can purchase from the farmers' hands who grew it, and where I can stick everything in my backpack and bike home not using any plastic bags or paying any middle men or using any gasoline. I revel in that process. Instead, now I'm piling into a smelly diesel-powered car and driving to the supermarket and paying the guards to watch our Nissan and being confronted with an entire store full of packaged food in other languages, as well as some very questionable vegetables. Then we leave and have starving children reach their arms through the car windows begging and telling us how hungry they are, and I realize how ridiculously privileged I am to even be shopping in a supermarket, with aisles and aisles of groceries to choose from. The whole experience of food shopping in Kinshasa is not for the weak of heart.

Our regular meals here are good--I make a mean potato leek soup, we have lentils a lot, frozen pizza with our own topping inventions, stir fries of every variety (depending on what vegetables are not soggy in the store), steak frites, curries, and roast chicken. But I'm still teaching myself how to cook and I feel restless making the same things over and over.

So there's days like today, where for the past hour I've been perusing my favorite recipes sites online, like Simply Recipes and Foodgawker, and I FEEL LIKE COOKING. Carrot cake muffins? I don't have muffin tins. Pesto pasta salad? No cherry tomatoes, and a handful of pine nuts are over $10. Spinach and orzo? Only spinach I've seen comes from a can. Chicken enchiladas drenched in green chile sauce, with a tecate on the side? I won't even go there.

I think this is one of those instances where creativity is essential, as well as exploration and discovery. No, I can't seem to find those perfect little fresh mozzarella balls I love so much, but there are papayas growing in my garden. And mangosteen (though they're almost out of season) and safou, which is a mixture between an avocado and a artichoke (or an eggplant according to some). I have a friend here who made plaintain flambe, though apparently it wasn't a huge success. Maybe I should take tips from the Congolese men who keep telling me I need to learn to cook traditional food for Owen--fufu and manioc and saltfish.

I'm also learning that despite the outrageous prices there are advantages to shopping in an international marketplace. There's Belgian chocolate, rice noodles, and dozens of curry mixes. I'm hooked on chocolate-covered rice cakes, and I will never appreciate bell peppers quite as much as when they cost $3 each. The local carrots are those small stubby ones that are half purple that they sell at farmer's markets in California. And the cheese from Goma (out East where all the fighting is happening) is AMAZING--so soft and mild.

So I guess I'll live, and learn, and eat, and when I return to the USA I'll probably whine and gripe about not having the fruit I'm learning to love here. But then again Berkeley Bowl's produce section is pretty epic...