Food!

Yes. I love food. Acually I was rather notorious among my team members during the trip for eating so much...a couple of times I became nervous that I was eating us out of our entire Discovery budget!

Anyway, there was some lovely food in Mozambique. Nothing fancy, really. Nourishing, though. Like the chicken stew in the above picture, and matapa and beans, below. Matapa is made with manioc leaves and ground peanuts.

mmmmmmm.

One of the staple foods in Mozambique is called shima. (I've seen it spelled several different ways; I'm using this one because it sounds like it looks). Shima looks and tastes like cold cream of wheat. It is served in globs. You eat it with your hands. I happen to like cream of wheat (cold or not), so I liked shima!

Shima has a hierarchy, though. A hierarchy of taste. I am told that shima made from manioc root flour is not tasty at all. Shima made from millet flour, from my own experience, is barely edible. Shima made with corn flour (the kind we had most) is quite tolerable.

But here's the thing - its served with caril, which is pretty much any kind of sauce. Like the beans in the picture above. Every kind I tried was delicious: beans and cabbage, chicken and potatoes, greens and tomatoes, even fish.

While I stayed in Tete, I stayed with Jenni and Mikael Bister, who are helping to translate the Bible into Nyungwe. I had the pleasure of meeting Mikael's parents, who were visiting from Sweden. They had lots of stories about thier lives in Sweden and about being missionaries to Thailand. Mrs. Bister was always cooking something. One day she made us orange cake...
(no more words are needed. Bask in its glory.)

Last, but not least, I decided to be especially adventurous and try grasshoppers. I have to try at least one wierd food, right? They were so good.

...just kidding. They were actually one of the worst foods I have ever tasted.

But we probably just cooked them wrong.