Becca's Adventures in Ghana: November 2012

My favorite dish, groundnut soup with banku.

One of my first posts on this blog was about my mixed feelings about the food here. I have learned, and eaten, a lot since then. Overall I would describe the food here as comfort food that does not need nostalgia to taste good. Everything is very savory, carb heavy, and usually very well cooked like stews. A friend asked on Facebook about the food, and I felt bad sending him my less than glowing blog post from before so I thought I would just give some updates.

Things that have changed: I have had fufu that I liked. I really like banku and choose it over rice now. I found so much food at chop shops that I love. These are like permanent food stalls, in between an restaurant and street food. I have been cooking in my own house and have had some good and not so good experiments with the local foods.

Things that have not changed: I have yet to find a good meat pie even though I keep trying, I still really like the fruit (the bananas sometimes almost taste like they are artificially flavored they are so banana-y)

I do find myself eating a lot of the same foods when I get food at chops which is not surprising given the

relative lack of variety. I basically have four dishes I get. Some places only serve one, some all: Red red (beans); rice with cotombre stew (like a bitter green chopped fine and stewed with lots of oil and spices); waayke (rice and beans) with stew and boiled egg; or banku and groundnut (peanut) soup. For the street food, I have been eating a lot of friend potatoes with a spicy/fishy/tomato sauce, hardboiled eggs with spicy sauce and grilled corn. My favorite stall in Kpando I went to three nights in a row last week and I could probably eat there almost every night. I love the woman there is named Janet, like my mom. I think I may ask her if I can come and watch and learn to cook from her. I am not sure I can make banku at home, like tamales I think is is something that needs to be made in mass quantity to be worth the time, but the peanut stew there is so much better than any I have had before.

A take out food place, or can eat at a little stool.

In the kitchen I have not made much of an effort to make the local food since I eat it everyday at lunch (school lunches are either beans, or rice/yam with fish stew) I also do not have power every third day, so really only cook dinner maybe 3 times a week. I need to get a gas stove but the propane is impossible to get except in the capitol and I have just been lazy. When there is power, I have been making other types of foods with the local ingredients. So far my most successful have been eggplant or okra curries; potato, corn and chicken stew with Italian seasonings; and the fluffy sweet bread here makes some of the best French toast ever. There is still a pretty limited grocery selection so I make a lot of rice, bean or bread-based dishes. Sometimes I find things I have not had here before, like beets or bell peppers in the market and these seem like a huge treat in a diet that is 80% starches. (Am I the only person that can gain weight in sub-Saharan Africa?) I have cooked a few things for the first time, like yam and some greens I still do not know the name of. I also learned a few neat ways to use ramen noodles from my ex-roommate that were pretty good, like using them as part of a bigger dish. My biggest failures have been pancakes, fried rice (maybe a pan issue), and cooking unripe okra (after 45 minutes it was still crunchy),

The school kitchen that feeds three meals to 50 kids and lunch to 150.

On the beverage front I still like the Castle Milk Stout the most, but when I am super hot a Savannah Dry cider or Star (the Budweiser of Ghana) is great. I am currently drinking my first glass of wine here that I found in a box for 2USD, not too bad actually.

So here are just some pictures of the foods I eat a lot.