I love food. I know, I know, a lot of girls say that and then go eat six berries for breakfast. Not me. The primary reason I run is so I can stuff my face with all kinds of delicious goodness and still manage to keep the needle on the scale in relatively the same place. And to fit into my pants.
As I was eating a black-beans-mixed-with-whatever-other-canned-veggies-we-have wrap yesterday for lunch for the billionth time, I realized how much my eating habits have changed since we moved here. For the better, I think. I cook more and eat out less and consume fewer processed foods.
I never thought we were huge restaurant-eaters when we lived in Virginia. But now it’s dawning on me: damn, we ate a lot of Chipotle. Quick-serve eateries are hard to find in Senegal. There are zero drive-throughs and I’ve yet to find anywhere you can just order at a counter and have your food whipped up right in front of you. Even the most casual places have menus and servers.
Because I view anything beyond “utter order, grab bag, leave” as a hassle, especially when it’s filled with my French mutterings and miscues, I’ve taken to preparing way more dinners at home. We used to go out to eat perhaps two or three nights out of the week Monday through Friday, counting quickie places and drive-throughs and happy hours (D.C. happy hours…R.I.P., we miss you). After a long day of working, running and commuting, the last thing I wanted to do was spend an hour in front of a hot stove. Now I make dinner almost every night, save for our Tuesday ritual of eating with our softball teammates at an awesome sushi place after practice. I almost always went out for lunch at my job in D.C., too, needing a break from my desk and knowing I could get a huge $6 make-your-own salad at one of the many delis downtown.
I’m also realizing I haven’t eaten certain foods in more than two months – foods that I previously thought I would surely die without, including:
- Sour cream. Low-fat tubs at Harris Teeter were always calling my name. I know I can make my own relatively easily with yogurt and vinegar. But I haven’t yet.
- Chicken sausage. We used to put this processed goodness in just about everything as a slightly healthier alternative to regular sausage. I tried lamb sausage here once. And nearly threw up from the smell of it.
- Ground turkey. Again, used to use the 99-percent-fat-free stuff in place of ground beef, always. Haven’t seen it in Senegal.
- Tacos. This is another Rachael-could-probably-make-it-if-she-wasn’t lazy things. I’m sure some store in Senegal has hard taco shells, but I haven’t seen them.
In general, we’ve been eating basically like vegetarians at home – a good thing. The meat at the grocery store we walk to is stupidly expensive and sometimes not that great, and since we still don’t have our car, I can’t easily zip over to the butcher. Yes, I could take a cab over. But in my mind, here are the steps that would take:
- Get dressed and look presentable (I usually run in the evenings, so I spend my daytimes looking like a swamp creature in anticipation of just getting hot and sweaty later)
- Negotiate a taxi ride
- Pray taxi actually knows where the butcher is, because I sure don’t and wouldn’t know how to direct him
- Have another painful interaction in French at the butcher
- Re-live cab experience to get home
All for…chicken breasts. I can be quite introverted when I’m alone and in a new environment, and that tendency has increased tenfold since coming to this foreign-language, foreign-looking land. I’m working on it. Completing errands here just seems like such a process sometimes. That’s not meant to sound lazy or whiny – just honest.
Pictured above is a spicy lime hummus I made for lunch one day in a desperate, cabinet-raiding hunger. Into the food processor went:
-1 can chickpeas
-Splash olive oil
-Couple tablespoons lime juice
-Hefty dashes of paprika, cilantro or parsley, garlic salt, Tabasco sauce and cayenne pepper
It was pretty darn tasty.
If you’ve lived abroad, how did you handle meals? Did you enjoy grocery shopping or were you overwhelmed?
Rachael Cullins is a twentysomething American girl living in Dakar, Senegal, with her husband and two dogs. She blogs about her adventures in Senegal and travels elsewhere in West Africa. She will reside in Dakar until summer 2013, when she and her family will move to another foreign post as part of her husband’s career with the U.S. government. In addition to West Africa, she has traveled to France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy and Costa Rica and plans to continually add to that list.
