BELOW: The Orange breasted bush-shrike. Is that a mosquito in its beak? Probably not but I live in hope.

Beef, biscuits, belief and weevils.

Who would have thought you could wash Anzac biscuits; who would have thought you would have to? 

In that way of things in new places I made my first batch of Anzac biscuits and lined the tray with baking paper, which, I discovered, is not the baking paper one finds in Oz. This baking paper, more of the old-style greased paper, stuck to the bottom of the biscuits. I tried scraping with a knife, with some success; pondered eating the biscuits and not worrying about consuming a bit of paper at the same time and then decided to wash and scrape them with a knife.

Luckily this batch of AB’s turned out well; hard and crunchy so in the main it was a success. I lost one which crumbled like a tea-dunker but returned the others to the oven to dry out and think I can claim success. Needless to say the second batch went onto the tray sans paper!

We had a quiet weekend with yet another foray to Shoprite, where, prayers being answered perhaps or more focus and less confusion (I opt for prayers answered) there, in the middle of the fruit and veg. section was a rack FULL of nuts and dried fruit. Nirvana. So much for being a nut-free zone; if it ever was it is no longer. Almonds, pine-nuts, cashews, walnuts, pecans, pistachios .... a veritable nut frenzy. Not only that I found sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds and poppy seeds along with dried apricots (to make jam) and a good selection of South African dried fruit.

So what is not here? Well, good baking paper for one thing although perhaps that also exists and is yet to be found. Otherwise all is good and the pantry is well stocked. My recipe repertoire is limited without a mixer or food processor but a one-mix chocolate cake turned out fine yesterday and Anzacs are an easy mix. So too are gingernuts which are next on the list.

LEFT: Anzac biscuits minus the greaseproof paper.

We took another turn around the Italian deli in the Mamma Mia compound and bought gelato, fetta in olive oil and freshly baked crusty bread.  The vendor gaggle was at the gate again.  A young man with a deformed leg was selling what looked like hand-painted postcards; I had to buy a couple and think I will have them framed next time I am in Oz. They are quite prettily done.  

And the strawberry sellers were back with a vengeance but this time three not four. I tried to get away with only taking two trays but the pleas grew more insistent and I finally relented only to be showered with wishes for God’s grace and good luck. All of which never goes astray and may well be of more use than the strawberries.

A tray of mulberries and a hand of bananas were next but I said no to the bunch of freshly picked asparagus, delicious as it is, because there was simply no room left in the fridge. So it is strawberries and mulberries for breakfast and I have enough mulberries put aside to make a couple of pots of jam.

We had another power cut last night but I had made rice and bean salad and a green salad and decided to cook the South African coiled beef sausage early. This time the cooking was pretty much done by the time the power went out so lights out, candles lit and hopes that the inverter might let us watch the television programme we had on through to the end. We had the power back within two hours which was something of a surprise.

I suspect the food obsession amongst expats is sourced in the desire for familiarity and comfort. The thing about familiarity is that it doesn’t necessarily breed contempt but it does breed familiarity and that which is familiar is comforting; it creates a sense of the known, of belonging and the illusion of certainty. It is why, I am sure, that while immigrants give up much to make a new life, they rarely, if ever, give up the foods of their homeland.

The latest news on our goods is that the cargo ship is at Port Elizabeth and should be in Beria in Mozambique within a week. From there it is two weeks to Lilongwe and three days to clear customs. Which means, with any luck, probably a lot of luck actually, we are looking at the first week of October for setting up the house.

LEFT: Port Beria in Mozambique.

The bad news is that the House Mosquito failed miserably last night and two colleagues made their way into our bedroom and under the net. We both woke in the night to a buzzing but did not find the culprits until the morning. Note to Self: spray room at night before lowering net.

There’s a little bird outside which makes the sweetest sound; ’whiiiiiip, whiiiiip, whiiiip!’  and there is another one  which seems to say: ‘what are you doing, what are you doing.’  I wonder if it is the brown-grey bird with the brilliant rust coloured breast which I see hopping through the garden beds?  I just hope the local bird diet is high in mosquito!

God I love the net. A short search and it's a good bet my warbling friend is an Orange Breasted Bush Shrike!

I gave Limited – always have the temptation to write Ltd., but he signs himself as Limited so I feel honour-bound to hold the line – some cold meat and the rest of the rice and bean salad this morning. He must have thought the piece of steak was a bit suspicious because he told me that he and Mbwe do not eat pork. I asked him if it was religious and he said no.  Perhaps it is a belief, also taken up by Jews and Moslems as a given, that pork is not safe; that it is ‘unclean.’ This was a very sensible view thousands and even hundreds of years ago given the propensity of pigs to disease but not so much in the modern age.

Although I still would not eat pork in India for that very reason and perhaps it is not a good idea to eat it here either.  Much of Africa is not in the modern age. Not that I have seen any pork; nor lamb for that matter. And the beef which is on sale has a very strong smell. It is not ‘off’ but it is gamey. One American expat holds that the gamey smell is because the beef is free-range and grass-fed (as opposed to the American grain-fed and crammed into pens approach) but most of Australia’s beef is grass-fed and free-range and it does not have a gamey smell. There has to be another reason. It could be the variety of grass eaten I suppose.  Or it could just be very, very, very well aged!  The smell at the supermarket is on the verge of overwhelming. Whatever it is I don’t particularly like it. But it tastes okay once cooked. I tell myself that the smell means it is rich in minerals and extremely good for me.

 The chicken is fine and the fact that the de-feathering process seems to be a tad cavalier suggests they are local and possibly not factory-produced. That is a huge assumption however. The chicken we ate in Angola came in frozen from Brazil; no doubt from the worst of factory farming. But beggars can’t be choosers and sometimes you can have too much information.

Then again, historically Malawians have not eaten a lot of meat. The Nyasaland missionaries at the end of the 19^th century recorded that bananas were the staple food and that villages would be surrounded by acres of banana plants; that is until Arab slavers decimated the countryside and wreaked havoc upon normal life.

ABOVE: Malawi cattle grazing in the wild.

Millet, peanuts and maize were cultivated and while cattle were plentiful the meat was rarely eaten. Maybe it was ‘smelly’ meat even then? The people also kept goats, pigs and chickens but there were so many superstitions regarding meat that it came a long way down on the menu list. Chicken for instance was said to make women infertile. And while wild game abounded there were restrictions upon who could eat which animal. It all sounds like a lot of hard work.

But Lake Malawi, offered a wealth of fish which probably made it easy to avoid meat and this formed a huge part of the diet along with peas, beans, rice, pumpkins and sugar-cane.  Fish stocks these days are sadly depleted although the government has plans to re-stock the lake and monitor over-fishing.  Catching fish is less dangerous than catching wild animals. Cattle of course have long been the ‘currency’ in Africa and would be killed only for a very special event.

Still talking food – lasagne for tea. I found the odd weevil embedded in the pasta. By the look of it they chewed their way in and died of exhaustion. Unless they were in the Italian flour in the first place which I doubt.  Do I bother to excavate them or regard them as a protein bonus?  I’m opting for protein bonus at this stage of the game; after all they just look like specks of pepper and won’t be identifiable at the stage of eating. I ate more than my fair share of weevils in India so they are the least of my worries. To echo Russell Crowe's character in The Far Side of the World: 'it's the lesser of two 'weevils.'

LEFT: Weevils, one of the food groups. They taste better than they look.

There’s a story about weevils which always amused me although that is probably not a sensitive response. I read some years ago that a study in the UK found Indian emigrants frequently suffering from malnutrition.

They could not understand why this was so when they ate the same things in England that they had eaten in their homeland.

All was revealed however when it was found that English ingredients, not surprisingly, were lacking in one crucial thing; weevils.

Vegetarian Indians were able to survive on their diet because it was laced with protein in the form of weevils! The Gods do play sport with us!

All that paranoia about being good Hindus and Jains and not killing living, moving things and millions had died in the name of dinner! Some Hindus and Jains will not eat food which grows in the ground, like potatoes and onions for instance, because of the carnage which results from digging them up; countless billions of tiny creatures die in the process of harvesting.  Although I would have thought there was a pretty high death rate picking fruit or gathering foods grown on top of the ground. But let's not allow reason into the realm of belief; particularly religious belief.

The truly orthodox do not drive in cars or fly in planes because of the trillions of living creatures squashed or  sucked to their deaths; the truly, truly orthodox do not wear clothes for the same reason.

I was always struck by the fact that such rigid adherence to belief ignored the fact that every time we rub our eyes, or run our hands through our hair, or wipe our bums for that matter, we are mowing down  zillions of microscopic but still living, breathing and moving creatures.

But human beings have the unique capacity of holding two utterly conflicting beliefs at one and the same time. There's a lot to be said for moderation in all things. I did count the number of weevil carcases in my pasta and can state quite categorically, the presence is moderate. It might be better though if Greg reads this after he has eaten and not before. He does check in on the blog from time to time but I am probably safe since he has been busy getting the car filled with diesel. We have had a shortage the past week and the queues trail all over Lilongwe.

Appreciate what you have when you have it and take nothing for granted is the lesson around here.