Groundnut Stew Recipe

Here is probably my 2nd favorite recipe so far... it may have been my first favorite if it had been made a little spicier as it is traditionally made.  Awutor has started to make things a lot less spicy (if spicy all) than the traditional recipe because she knows the Courtney kids are more likely to eat some.


Groundnut Stew

Ingredients
2 lbs kini fish (they didn't have kini at the market today so I bought 2 red snappers)
3 small onions
2 cloves of garlic grated
2 garden eggs (aka eggplant)
2 hot peppers (I recommend 4-5)
1 sweet pepper (bell pepper)
1 oz tomato paste
1/2 lb roasted groundnut paste (you can use natural peanut butter)
Salt, pepper, thyme, and a maggi cube (beef buillion)
1 pint cooking oil (palm oil is usually used here)

Directions
1.  Scale and wash fish.  Cut up in pieces 2-3 inches long including head and tail.  Fry in oil.

 2.  Saute onions, garlic, hot peppers

3.  Add peeled and sliced garden eggs and some water

4.  Add groundnut paste and the rest of the seasonings.   Let simmer for 10 minutes

Serve over rice

And because I am always drooling by the time lunch is ready, I again forgot to take a picture of the finished product.  I promise to be better!  Awutor is coming on Friday so hopefully I will be able to hold off my hunger.  We are making a dish called 'green' (what we had meant to make the day we made crain crain but bought the wrong plasas).

Everybody take care! 

River #2

As promised... the beach at River #2...

As soon as we arrived, we rented one of the little cabanas.  One of the downsides to this beach is that they seem to nickle and dime you.  If you rent a table (its cheaper) but you have to pay another 3,000 Leones for every extra chair.

Then we ordered some lunch... I ordered the shrimp with rice, and John the barracuda with chips (aka french fries)

While we were waiting a guy with coconuts came by.  We ordered two... mostly so we could watch in awe of his machete skills.

So first he cut a hole in the top so we could drink the liquid.  Then we gave it back to him to cut open to get at the flesh.

Here is the inside...

And John being silly with the meat

We both LOVE coconut!

After lunch we took the kiddies into the pool and gave both Owen and Dwight swimming lessons.

This was Dwight's first swimming lesson and he did great.  We are teaching him to blow water out his nose instead of plugging it while he swims.  We are also teaching him to roll over and float on his back when he needs to break.

Anabelle didn't want a swimming lesson, but after the day was over she said she would get a swimming lesson next time.  I think she wants to be a part of what her brothers are doing.  Plus she could see we weren't drowning them nor were they kicking and screaming :)

Anabelle played a little frisbee with her dad

John and I went for a walk on the beach.  I love the dark skies!

 It looked like it was about to rain the whole time but it never did.

 

And finally... we buried Owen just for fun.  I liked the idea of it till he figured out he was kind of stuck lol!

Have a great Monday everyone!  Its raining here right now which I love because we didn't have electricity last night so we were all sweating the whole night without the fan blowing on us.  The rain really cools the place down!

A Taste of Home

Ok I lied...  the post about River #2 is coming up next... but today... a little taste of the southwest.

One thing that the Courtneys and the Campbells have in common is their love of Mexican Food.  Some of it is a little hard to come by unless you want to pay more for it. 

Here are the local 'mexican' ingredients made in Sierra Leone:

avocados
cilantro
lime
hot peppers
chicken
rice
black eyed beans

Here are the imported ingredients that we used:

left over chicken from a grill the weekend before
Lebanese pita bread (aka tortillas)
can of green chilis from America
pinto beans from America
tomato paste from America
sour cream/yogurt from Lebanese store
cheese from Lebanese store

Here in Sierra Leone, I would say most businesses are run by the Lebanese.  Very few businesses are run by Sierra Leoneans.  I think the economic situation of Sierra Leone would greatly improve if they were the ones running businesses. The Lebanese grocery stores have all their store's goods shipped from Lebanon and thus the prices reflect it.  AKA very expensive! While I try to buy lots of fruits, vegetables, rice, and legumes locally, sometimes you just really need some chickpeas to make hummus or feta cheese and olives.

So Robin and I set to work to make a Mexican food dinner for our families.  Robin has a delicious recipe for sour cream enchiladas!  However when we bought the sour cream, it seemed to be a little fermented, which I don't mind but most people probably would.  So Robin went back to try the yogurt to see if it wouldn't be so sour and it was a tad on the sweet side.  Therefore, we mixed the two and it worked out perfectly. 

Robin's Sour Cream Enchiladas

Ingredients

2 pieces Lebanon pita bread
12 ounces sour cream (or in our case sour cream/yogurt)
1 small can green chilis
1 bunch of green onions
butter
1 cup shredded cheese
2-3 chicken breasts

Directions

1.  cook chicken and shred or cut up small
2.  saute green onions in a little bit of butter
3.  mix together 1/2 of cheese with sour cream, chilis, green onion, and chicken
4.  cut up and layer lebanese bread on bottom of 13 x 9 pan
5.  poor chicken and sour cream mixture on top
6.  add another layer of lebanese bread
7.  top with cheese and bake for 30 minutes in 350 degree oven (or in our case on the second dial seems to work great)


We ate these enchiladas with refried beans, Spanish rice,

lebanese tortilla chips baked with lime and salt,

and an avocado cilantro mixture.

It was sooo tasty!  Here is my plate... half-eaten...  I know I should have taken a picture first but I got hungry!

Oh! I love Mexican food!  Alright... next up I promise... the beach at River #2

Hodge Podge #1

One day John, Chad, and myself went to visit Father Peter, a priest in the Catholic Church in Sierra Leone.  He is also really involved in development of Sierra Leone (as I am learning that most people that care about the souls and spiritual well-being of this country need to be).  We went up to visit him and he offered us tea and coffee.  Chad and John chose coffee... I chose this tea which tasted like a fruit roll-up... it was Twinings brand Orange, Mango, and Cinnamon.  Later I found some in the store and bought it and would definitely recommend it (considering I usually don't like orange flavored tea).

In his office/house which is inside the church and catholic school there, there was the funniest thing!

A fireplace!!!!

In West Africa where heating is UNHEARD of.  Well, so is AC.  Most Africans hate going into areas where there is AC because it chills them to the bones!

I was laughing so hard because it was fake and emitted NO heat!! It was just for looks!  John and I loved it!

Another interesting part of living here in Sierra Leone is the lack of washers and dryers.  The Courtneys have hired somebody to do the laundry weekly and were pay 20,000 Leones (less than 5 dollars).  It was just too much for Robin to do while homeschooling and cooking pretty much every meal from scratch.  When John and I arrived, we added our clothes for another 5,000 Leones a week (just over a dollar). 

However, both Robin and I do not feel comfortable letting someone wash our underwear lol!  Mostly because of embarrassment.  Also, Alli (the guy who washes our clothes and is a night guard for us) uses a scrubbing board and then wrings them out.  This stretches most of our clothes out.  John had 12 inch socks that stretched to at least 16 inches lol!  I like that he stretches my pants out though... not as tight now!  For some of our t-shirts, the rough scrubbing board wears holes in our shirts after a few washes.

Because of this, I have washed both John and I's unmentionables, John's socks and dress shirts, and anything else that may be delicate.  Basically I fill the sink with laundry detergent and water.

Then I get to scrubbing! I wash whites and lighter colors first.  After the initial scrubbing I do two rinse cycles to try and get the soap out.  Getting the soap out is nearly impossibly and most of our clothes end up feeling a little starchy.
 I thought about showing you the water after I scrubbed all the clothes, but decided the mucky brown water wasn't visually appealing.  At first I thought it was the dirt from the clothes but I think it was more some of the dye from the clothes.  It was probably a little bit of both!

After the second rinsing, I hung them up in the room to dry. 

Don't tell John I posted a picture of his undies on the internet for the world to see lol!

After any of our clothes dry, we MUST iron them.  It does make them feel softer, but it has a second function... to kill the Mango Flies.

What is a mango fly you may ask?  Well mango flies deposit their larvae into damp soil or cloth (aka clothes out drying in the sun)  then they wait for a vector.  The mango fly larvae can live in dry clothes for up to 48 hours.  Once a person puts the clothing on, the larvae burrow themselves into our skin.  As the larvae morphs into a maggot, it can be see under the skin and is very painful.  Treatment is to suffocate them by putting a layer of Vaseline over the maggot until it breaks through the skin to reach air.  At this time, you can remove the maggot from your skin.

Because I really don't want to have worms growing under my skin, we iron all of our clothes which kills the larvae.  You can also just wait till after 48 hours after the clothes have been dry which I've done as well.  As I said though, the ironing does remove the wrinkles and makes the clothes not so stiff. 


Ok, hope enjoyed the hodge podge post.  Tomorrow (or maybe the next day) I'll take you to River #2, a beach that John enjoyed better than Laka Beach.

Crain Crain and Fried Plantains Recipes

A Sierra Leonean recipe!

After the cassava leaves at the restaurant, Crain Crain was my second exposure to local dishes.  And it was a happy accident.  Awutor (pronounced Ah-woo-toe) has been teaching Robin and her kids Krio since she's been here twice a week as well as teaching Robin to cook local dishes. 

Robin and I walked down to the local market called the Congo Cross Market to buy the food needed.  We didn't quite succeed.  Awutor had phoned us to tell us to get plasas because we were going to make "plasas" Plasas come in bunches and they are basically green leafy vegetables.

At the market, we stopped at the first lady we came to that had greens.  We asked her if we could use her greens to make plasas and she assured us that we could.  Unfortunately that was not the case!  We bought crain crain leaves instead.  Apparently, when all of the leafy greens are cooked they are called "plasas" while we were looking for a particular plasa called green. lol! 

Our mistake! So Awutor decided to cook crain crain instead.   Here are the crain crain leaves that we first picked off the stem then washed.

After we washed the stems, Awutor basically chiffonaded the leaves by hand.  She grabbed a handful and then sliced them in her hand!  It was a really neat process!

Although we only used beef for the crain crain this time, it traditionally has fish as well.  This is a variation from "Whats Cooking Today" which is a local recipe book by Muriele Emekunle Davies that Robin bought me when I arrived.

Crain Crain (Draw Soup)

Ingredients
1 lb bony beef
2 maggi cubes (aka beef buillion)
4 peppers (the peppers here are HOT!!! like habaneros in my opinion!)
1 tsp Bicorbonate of soda (baking soda)
1 pt. palm oil
1 sliced or ground onion
4 large tie crain crain leaves
Salt to taste
Water for cooking

Directions
1.  Cut beef and put in sauce pan with 1 maggie cube, onions, pepper, and salt and steam
2.  Add one pint of water and boil the ingredients for another 10 minutes
3.  Add palm oil and coninue boiling
4.  Add crain crain leaves already picked, washed and chiffonaded.  Sprinkle bicarbonate of soda to preserve colour and improve sliminess (we didn't do this step and I thought this recipe was delicious!)
5.  Add second maggi cube
6.  Simmer till all ingredients are well blended
7.  Serve with foo foo/rice/gari/agidi

Serves 6-8 persons

I absolutely ADORED this dish... probably one of my favorite local dishes (by now I've eaten around 8 or 9) I can't decide if I like this better or groundnut stew.

With the crain crain Robin whipped up some fried plantains which are also very tasty!  This recipe is quite easy. 

Fried Plantains

Ingredients
Plantains
Palm oil

Directions
1.  Slice up plantains

2.  Fry plantains on each side till slightly browned.  Make sure the oil sizzles to water before adding plaintains.

3. Remove plantains and let drain on a paper towel. 

Hope you guys enjoy the recipe!  You can probably make it in the states using spinach or kale and it would turn out delicious and spicy!

Tomorrow I will try and post a hodge podge.  I have a lot of extra pictures that don't really fit "anywhere" but are neat, interesting, or comical that I would love to share with you! God Bless!

Laka Beach

The weekend before last Chad and Robin took us and the kids to experience the beaches for the first time.  Despite not having hot water, shoddy electricity, limited water supplies and food variety, we are very blessed to have beaches as beautiful as here in Sierra Leone.

When we first got there we ordered some food.  We got to look at our food before preparation...

It took over an hour to prepare the food (as is often the case in Sierra Leone and I dare say most of Africa) but while doing so we went swimming with the kids.  The water was deliciously warm... nothing like the cold California water that I am used to.  And this is the 'colder' time of year now so I bet during the dry season it will be bath water! For those of you who know me well know that I love being warm!

We gave Owen who is four years old his first swimming lesson and he did great!  He's got an adventuresome and daring spirit so he took to swimming quite well.  I loved it too!  I used to teach swimming lessons for 7 years so it was so fun to try my hand at it again.  Afterwards he went up to his parents and said "Hey, I did an AWESOME job" because that is what we had been telling him during the lesson.

I wish I would have taken more pictures of the beach because it is a beautiful place.

While we didn't get these coconuts at the beach, I did buy some (the young coconuts for 50 cents each) and the older coconuts were from the trip we took with Pastor Ben.  He gave them to us for free!

These are young coconuts. 

More of the inside is liquid and less is flesh.  The part that is flesh is very gel-like, not hard like older coconuts.  The liquid is very good for your health.  It is full of potassium and minerals.  It is a natural, God-made gatorade without all of the sugar.  If you are into physical fitness, coconut water is great to drink following a workout or competition.  One cup has more potassium and minerals than gatorade and it has more potassium than a banana.  You can also make the flesh into a chocolate pudding.  I would blend the flesh from 3-5 young coconuts with cacao powder and sweetener of choice (I would use a couple of TBS of agave or a few drops of stevia).  I may try that here once I get my blender shipped on the next container or with the next team. 

Here is a more mature coconut.  More of its water has turned into a hardened flesh.  This is what coconut flakes would be made out of.  Both types of coconut water and flesh are very nutritious and contain healthy fats.

Double Date

One night, Chad and Robin took us out to dinner as a welcome to Sierra Leone.  The kids were at a friend's house.  They took us to a restaurant called Mamba Point specializing in pizza and sushi.  A great combination!

Upon sitting were served popcorn and peanuts.  Probably the first time I've ever received both as appetizers lol!

Since I am a SUSHI LOVER... we decided to get some sushi.  But holy cow was it expensive!  In Flagstaff at our beloved Hiro's sushi place, we get a roll cut into 8 pieces for $7-10 depending on the roll.  Here it was about the same prize for a roll that only had 3 pieces!  The sushi chefs are Philipinos and do an excellent job.

But because the sushi was so expensive... we ordered a large pizza to supplement it.  It was a Boston and had mushrooms, pepperoni, ham, onions, green bell pepper and olives.  It was pretty tasty also.

 

We had just a great night getting to know Chad and Robin better.  We are so blessed to be able to stay with them right now!