I've been taking lunch at my project, DAPP Book Shop, that I work as a volunteer. The main dish made every day in my project is a Malawian staple food called nsima (or nshima). It's like a soft pudding and it's made from white maize flour without any spice, even salt, so, it isn’t tasty. You have to eat it with some tomato sauce and vegetables. Almost every lunch there are nsima, a kind of vegetable cooked with tomatoes, and also egg or a kind of meat, that can be fish or other meat like chicken or goat. The cooked vegetables are usually pumpkin leaves, spinach or cabbage always cooked with tomatoes, salt and a lot of cooking oil. Only once a week there is rice instead of nsima. Usually I bring soya beans that I cook at home as a complement for my lunch. The most interesting thing when you see Malawians eating nsima is that they eat with hands! I tried to do the same twice but it's difficult for me to use hands to eat.
The food in the DAPP Book Shop is made by a cooker. His name is Thokozani. He cooks in a small kitchen using a simple wood-burning stove and not so many kitchen utensils. The first time I saw this kitchen I was afraid to eat food made there. But after I became familiar with that place there is no problem. I like the food that he makes.
I've been taking lunch at my project, DAPP Book Shop, that I work as a volunteer. The main dish made every day in my project is a Malawian staple food called nsima (or nshima). It's like a soft pudding and it's made from white maize flour without any spice, even salt, so, it isn’t tasty. You have to eat it with some tomato sauce and vegetables. Almost every lunch there are nsima, a kind of vegetable cooked with tomatoes, and also egg or a kind of meat, that can be fish or other meat like chicken or goat. The cooked vegetables are usually pumpkin leaves, spinach or cabbage always cooked with tomatoes, salt and a lot of cooking oil. Only once a week there is rice instead of nsima. Usually I bring soya beans that I cook at home as a complement for my lunch. The most interesting thing when you see Malawians eating nsima is that they eat with hands! I tried to do the same twice but it's difficult for me to use hands to eat. 
The food in the DAPP Book Shop is made by a cooker. His name is Thokozani. He cooks in a small kitchen using a simple wood-burning stove and not so many kitchen utensils. The first time I saw this kitchen I was afraid to eat food made there. But after I became familiar with that place there is no problem. I like the food that he makes. 
Just an FYI, wanted to share a blog we did today (please feel free to cross-post) about our travels in Lilongwe, Malawi. We blog everyday from all over Africa at a website call Border Jumpers (http://www.borderjumpers.org) and for the Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet (http://blogs.worldwatch.org/nourishingtheplanet/).
ReplyDeleteHere is the link: "1,000 Words About Malawi"
http://borderjumpers1.blogspot.com/2010/03/1000-words-about-malawi.html
All OUR best, Bernard Pollack and Danielle Nierenberg