Food!

The food here has been phenomenal, if only a little repetitive.  Most days Nafi Coulibaly (our wonderful cook, Sedou's sister-in-law, who also cooks for the whole Coulibaly clan - almost 30!) gets us a good serving of rice/pasta, some salad, and a meat, and sometime fruit salad too!  Sometimes she doesn't have the chance, understandably, and we have to improvise.  Yogurt in a bag from the corner, or eggs on white bread.  We eat a lot of white bread.  For breakfast it's mostly white bread and PB, jam, or maybe eggs if we have them.  But I digest...

My first favorite dish was clearly Pate (with a fancy accent at the end).  It's ground beef in a fried dough shell.  What's not to love?  Goes great with ketchup, served best with french fries.  Though sometimes you get one that has too much dough and you have to pick around it.  Not so good.  Also one night we got only Pate which was a little odd.  But I figure this woman is cooking us lunch and dinner, on top of feeding her family of 30+ people, and she's fasting all day!  Yep, Ramadan's a killer.  But she does it and it's always delicious.  Here's Pate in a bowl!

For a more balanced meal, try the fish with a side of rice and tigadegena.  The fish is full of bones and the Tigadegena full of... whatever she puts in it that day...  The fish certainly takes some getting used to but it's great when it gets there hot, and the tigadegena is a great side dish.  Full of protein!

Sometimes we get more Coulibaly-esque dishes, like this one (below) with a healthy serving of Black Eyed Peas.  The red gooey stuff I'm pretty sure is like Malian ratatouille, filled with whatever Nafi could pull together.  It's quite good though with a medley of vegetables and, is that pasta? I think it is.  Oh and lamb has come to the part! How delightful.  

Despite being called peas they ravage your bowl movements like beans and hilarity is sure to ensue.  After the health concerns behind eating as well as daily talks about sanitation, you come to get very comfortable discussing the human body's reactions to certain foods.  And drink.  And the smells.  Too much?  You have no idea.

If we're lucky we get chicken, which is always delectable and salty, with a side salad, and mac and cheese.  Though it's not really mac and cheese, it's more like pasta with a mystery butter sauce.  Again, delicious.  The Ratty could learn a thing or two from Nafi Coulibaly. 

 

If you've had a hard day, though, you can always stop off at Relax and grab some great Tubab food, shown here:

Mmm.  Yep, we're eating good her in Mali, and the thing I miss most is, of course, cold milk.  Ah well.  Bittersweet sorrow.