Quasi-local cuisine

Last night one of my african friends came over to visit. Whenever I know he is coming it stresses me out a bit. I wonder what we are going to talk about. I wonder when he will show up. His arrival can vary from time to time by as much as three hours- or sometimes he doesn't show up at all. And I think more than anything else I worry about what I will feed him. He generally arrives around 8:00, which is a good hour before the normal supper time here.  It is expected in this culture that a host will feed his visitors, and usually mine come two at a time. It really should not be that big a deal cooking for three instead of one, but the fact that it is late and unpredictable, and that most of the things I eat do not figure into their menu, causes me to spend the entire afternoon dreading their arrival. The odd thing is, once they are here I enjoy myself. So I just need to learn to trust God with the pre-arrival jitters.

Anyway, that was more than I meant to say on that subject. The point of all of this is that last night I didn't cook at all. My friend did all of the cooking! Furthermore, what he came up with was surprisingly familiar. Instead of a typical rice concoction (which he and I worked on together last time he was over) he opted for potatoes. I'm a fan of that! It turns out the people in his part of the country grow potatoes, unlike everyone who lives in this part of the country, so spuds are a regular part of his diet.

This was his method:

-get a pot of water boiling
-toss in 6 to 8 potatoes, dirt and all.
-in a pan, start frying an onion in oil.
---add a bullion cube, salt, and pepper to the onion. (not healthy, but yummy!)
---add meat or fish. All I had was a can(tin) of sardines, so that's what we added.
---let it simmer until the onion tastes more like the bullion cube and the sardines than like an onion.
-Once the potatoes are done, remove them from the boiling water and plunk them into cold water. Once they are cool enough to hold, peel off the skins with a knife.
Put all of the potatoes into a kitchen-size emortar (every household has one here) and smash them with the pestle, adding a substantial hunk of butter in the process. My apartment doesn't have a mortar so I introduced him to my potato masher. I think a mortar and pestle would have worked better, especially since we weren't patient enough to wait until the potatoes were completely cooked.
-Plop the mashed potato onto a big tray and spread it out
-pour the onion and meat sauce over the top of it

And then, in typical local fashion, we each pulled up a chair, sat on opposite sides of the dish, and dug in.

I ate way more than him. When I asked him why he wasn't very hungry he explained that he eats lunch at 5:00. Yikes! No wonder he eats supper at 9:30. Poor guy; he must get really hungry at work.

After we had eaten our fill we each drank a glass of water. That's the way it is done here- you drink after the meal and you don't generally drink much.

So there you go, if you want to try living in my shoes for an evening you can make that for supper tonight. As for me, I'll probably go back to my standby of macaroni and tomato sauce. My basil bush is taking over the entire garden, so I grab any chance I have to incorporate basil into my meal.