"Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores": The Luxury of Cooking

We have moved back to Kigali because we found an apartment/hostel which has a kitchen where we can cook and is the same price as where we stayed in Kibungo. It’s back to intermittent flow of cold and hot showers (NOTE: showers not bucket showers which are extremely difficult when you have long hair. I seriously wish I chopped a few inches of my hair off).

I am really looking forward to the Sprinkles project to kick-in in March and doing some field work with INATEK students. I feel like this would be a great opportunity for me to see where I fit it and compare the ways of Nepal and Rwanda when it comes to INGO projects like these. These past few days have been mostly researching and synthesizing information for a funding proposal for DIZA and a lot of cooking in our new kitchen (only for the next 2 weeks) which we thoroughly enjoy.

I realize that I’ve been writing a lot about food but I guess it’s one of those things I’m very passionate about (who isn’t right?). Four of us have been having loads of fun preparing and cooking 3 meals a day with the occasional frustrations of having to do things “our own way” but there is definitely more fun, excitement and laughter in the process of cooking, eating and cleaning up. I was told it’s good practice for when I get married. I am really enjoying cooking with/for 3 other people –it definitely makes the food taste better J All of us LOVE spicy food and aren’t picky, vegans or vegetarians, and don’t have weird diet restrictions (except for the two Caucasians who don’t like chewing on cartilage and bones or organ meats). It definitely makes cooking more fun and less stressful.

Here’s some of the meals we’ve made so far:

Breakfast

-Pancakes (flour = rice, soybeans and groundnuts) and flambéed bananas in coconut oil and sugar syrup

-Peanut butter and honey on white bread/brown bread

-Boiled eggs

-Fruit salad (pineapple, passion fruit, papayas, bananas)

(This breakfast is definitely way better than what I have in Canada = cereal and milk)

Lunch/Dinner

-Avocado + tuna sandwiches

-Chicken/veggie stir-fry with rice

-Chicken curry with rice and papaya + tomato + cilantro chutney (new invention Molly and I came up with)

-Home-made soup with lots of veggies (For the broth, we used the scraps of bones left over from the whole chicken we bought)

-Mexican food (beans and rice, guac + salsa)

So what do you get when you put 3 girls in nutrition and 1 in science together? Some delicious meals, no wasting of foods and awesome team work. [I forgot to mention how nothing goes to waste when we're cooking: we used a whole chicken for 4 meals! We used the breasts of the chicken for stir-fry, the legs and thighs to make Nepali style chicken curry and the left over bones to make broth for chicken soup.] We have the luxury of cooking for one more week and then we are going to be eating meals in restaurants while we are doing field work in Musanze and Nyaraguru with the MNP (micronutrient powder) Project.