Food is always an adventure in Botswana, especially when you have no electricity or have to transport food several hours from shopping village to site! Have no fear! You will survive! But you might give yourself food poisoning along the way...
Living sans electricity is a shock and it takes time to adjust to-but after a while you will find that you don’t miss electricity (most of the time!) and you might even find yourself sitting in a quickly darkening room mo America without realizing you do have the capability to turn on a light switch...
Sans electric or sans fridge food storage is 100% weather dependent. As we are entering the summer months, you will find that your house heats up to 90 plus degrees (well mine does anyways) during the day. This does make keeping perishable food for a longer periods of time a little problematic. After time you will learn what you can and cannot keep and for how long you can keep it. It really is trial and error for a while, but you will get the hang of it. Your body will take time adjusting as well--think bacteria and your gut...I joke now that I have a gut of steel, but at first I was running to the bathroom frequently. However, during winter your house will be an icebox and food storage is a different, joyous beast since you can keep almost anything.
Helpful hints:
- When at the general dealer or in your shopping village, try not to buy anything that is sold refrigerated ie-produce that is refrigerated and eggs. Once you lug them home and store them sans refrigeration your items will turn very fast. Eggs don’t need to be kept refrigerated, just consume within a reasonable amount of time. Eggs submerged in water should NOT float or do a floaty/bobbing thing, nor should the inside look anything aside from a “normal egg” (feathers, funny colors) nor should they smell (it smells like death). Hold an egg up to the window/bright light to see if there is a chick inside (this has been known to happen).
- Milk, cheese and other dairy goodies....Unless you plan on having a “milk day” there is no safe way to keep milk for longer than a day. Sorry! Cheese can be kept, buy in small portions and keep in your faux fridge (see faux fridge instructions below). Cheese will get soft, a little oily, but that is fine. It might start to mold a titch but just cut it off. Yogurt-It can be kept in the sealed container, but consume very promptly and all at once.
- Meat. Just don’t do it. Don’t even think about storing meat safely (I do mean safely) during the summer, buy meat from your local butchery or out of the truck right before you plan on eating it. You may be able to eat your dinner leftovers for breakfast the following day just make sure to re-heat it thoroughly. Plan on eating canned chicken, tuna or beans for protein instead.
- Find the coolest, darkest place in your house. This is a great place to keep things like Flora, condiments and produce.
- Flora-I have found that Flora is a safe butter alternative during the summer, yes it does melt a little but its completely safe to consume at any stage of liquefaction/firmness.
- Condiments-I haven’t had a problem keeping condiments, but during the summer I do buy smaller bottles.
- Produce-If the MoE blesses you with a fridge you can’t use, don’t keep your produce in there...don’t even think about it. Your produce will turn faster than you can blink your eyes, then your fridge will stink. So put your food storage bins to use elsewhere. Purchase/care package veggie storage bags that prolong the life of your produce. A note on produce: its going to get wrinkly and soft. It is still okay to eat, it just isn’t as pretty. When you buy produce make sure it is completely dry before storing. If it starts to mold, assess the situation--you likely can cut it off. During the summer limit the amount of produce you buy from your shopping village frankly you can’t eat it all before it turns, instead hit up your local tuck shop or general dealers. You most likely have a produce truck that visits your village and sells to the dealers. Make friends with the vendors in your village and find out the day it comes to get the best selection of produce. Making friends with vendors in your village is also advantageous since then they might get in produce just for you (mine does). This ain’t America folks-make sure to wash wash and wash your produce before consuming. Also, be very aware of the bugs in your house-your produce might attract more of ‘em so keep a tidy home as well.
- Making a faux fridge. There are a couple different options when it comes to faux fridges. These fridges will cool your food, not keep it cold. The cooler your food the longer you can keep it. The simplest is to buy a bucket at Pep and fill it with water. You can then float leftovers in the water. The water stays “cool” and subsequently keeps your food “cool” Make sure your Tupperware is water tight! You can “lid” your bucket with a plate or a flattened box. Make sure to clean our your bucket on a regular basis. Another option is to purchase two different size earthenware vessels-think bucket size. Line the bottom of the larger bucket with sand, place smaller bucket in then line between the two buckets with sand then slowly moisten the sand with water. You can then keep produce and left-overs in the small earthenware vessel. The evaporation of the water cools the inner vessel. Make sure to keep sand moist. Cover all vessels with a lid. Or buy a cooler and freezer packs/water bottles, get freezer packs frozen at your school/clinics freezer and use to cool contents of cooler.
- If you have leftovers make sure they cool down completely before sealing the Tupperware. The last thing you want to do during the summer is eat hot food, but thoroughly reheating food will kill germs. Smell it before consuming-you nose knows! If it is growing mold-proceed with caution. Just be smart: think about what it is, how long its been out, will you reheat it, mold to food ratio etc.
- Water-I found that one of the hardest things for me was drinking water. The last thing I wanted to do was drink warm water on a hot day. Care package yourself flavored water, many come with vitamins or electrolytes that you need. Its a win win.
No comments:
Post a Comment