New food for lunch

written Thursday, 21 June 2007

 

 

Today for lunch we had something new: "satoo", which is basically grits with a peanut sauce.  Sounds weird, but it was pretty good.  I liked it better than the maffe (rice with fishy tasting peanut sauce) that we usually have for lunch.

 

And just to clarify a bit, in spite of the fact that there are only about five ingredients in village food (rice, corn, peanuts, onions, and "Jumbo" - a bouillon cube used in everything for flavor - plus fish or sheep/goat once in a while), all the dishes taste completely different.   The peanut sauces for lunch and dinner are different (dinner is better) and the corn in the breakfast "moono" porridge, lunch "satoo", and dinner "futoo" all have different textures and taste different.

 

Anyway, I was wondering if the change in the lunch menu means that my family can't afford rice anymore.   It is the beginning of the planting season now, which means it is also the beginning of the hungry season, as people begin to run out of what they harvested last year.  I've been told that it's getting harder to find peanuts and corn to buy, because no one is willing to sell what little they have.

 

I am not sure how this fits with my family running out of rice while they still have corn to eat, since they raise the corn themselves but have to buy the rice (rice is grown in some parts of Senegal, but what I have seen here is all imported from Thailand), but I am going to try to find out what's going on.