Do Your Eggs Come With Feathers?

We have had several people ask us about what we eat and how we cook since moving to Mozambique... So far, nothing too adventurous (no monkey brains or chocolate covered bugs although Dave did eat some Octopus...), but there are a few differences we thought we would share with you.

As you may know, we never did cook big even when we had every imaginable ingredient available to us in the States... Sometimes a fancy meal was Velveeta mac and cheese instead of Kraft mac and cheese!  Until last week, we have had a single gas burner to cook on...we just bought a single electric burner and doubled our cooking capacity!  We are eagerly awaiting our shipment (which will have our oven and microwave) which should leave the States in mid-March (meaning hopefully June it will be here).

Our staple food has been homemade tortillas...they are so good and you can eat anything on them...beans, rice, meat, eggs...yum!  We can buy ground beef and cheese here but it quite a bit more expensive than back home.  You can buy frozen chicken, but we often see people carrying their live chickens tied to the back of their motorcycle, on the chapa, or just walking home.  Twice we have bought eggs (you just tell them how many you want) and they put them in a plastic sack to take home (no carton)...it was a miracle we got them home without breaking them traveling on the bumpy roads!

Little bananas and giant avocados

This batch of eggs came with feathers

 Different stores carry different items, so to finish your shopping you will probably go to four or five stores.  You can't get fruits and vegetables at the little shops, so you have to go to the central market or find a roadside vendor.  Most days, people come by our house selling vegetables...tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, green beans, etc.  They can be a little more expensive, but it is nice to avoid the hassle of the market sometimes.  Any produce we buy, we soak in water with a cap full of bleach to make sure we don't get sick.  We also boil and filter all of our water for drinking, cooking, tooth brushing, etc.

Water filter

You can buy beans by the kilo at the market

Fat free milk is a rare find

Top row is the cereal aisle...cornflakes anyone?

"Made From Real Mealies"

The cereal aisle here is definitely different than in the U.S.  You can get a little box, a medium box, a large box, or a family size box of corn flakes.  We have seen a few other types of cereal for sale in certain stores but they seem to be way more expensive.  You can buy one liter cartons of long life milk that don't require refrigeration until you open them... At at least 60 meticais per liter, milk costs about 9 dollars a gallon! 

Popcorn the old-fashioned way

We don't seem to buy near as much prepackaged food here..mostly pasta, tomato sauce, and little rolls of cookies.  Our favorite treat is an ice cold Coca Cola... save the bottles or you will have a hard time getting more! 

Waiting for the rain to stop to collect the rest of our laundry

Laundry detergent and bleach

Laundry is a little different for us too...the washing machine is located outside under a covered veranda.  When it rains, it definitely takes a long time to get your clothes dry, but we are fortunate to have a place to hang them where they can stay dry and out of the sun.  I don't care what the commercials say ...line dried towels are not soft and fluffy (maybe its because I don't use fabric softener)!



Our biggest challenge at the moment is water.  We have a tank that periodically gets filled by city water that gets pumped into the house.  We also have rain water running into the tank (and collect rain water in barrels to haul to the tank) to supplement the city water.  When the city water isn't running and it isn't raining, we can have water hauled to the tank to help get us by.  Unfortunately, our tank has a leak and after recently hauling water, we lost almost all of it in a couple of days.  Our big project for next week will be replacing the tank so we can consistently have water. 

The leaking tank in our front yard

For those that have asked, yes we do have a toilet (although many in Mozambique do not), and we have AC as long as the power is on...so nice to sleep in a cool room!

AC unit (top left) makes sleeping under the mosquito net more bearable