random market foods

Another source of entertainment is our trips to the market where we buy anything new and different especially if and when we don’t know what it is. So far I think I’ve come home with at least 5 different things I’d never seen before.

1. spiky cucumber—I’d never seen a cucumber with spikes but there it was…still tasted like a cucumber…then they got really tough and then they started to taste more sour and fruity…strange evolution…

2. squash/pumpkin/cucumber thing—looked like a cucumber with warts and fuzz. When we brought it home beria told us the name (but I couldn’t remember it for the life of me) and then she cooked it for our lunch the next day. Boil it to death and then serve. Tasted like a squash and I think is classified as a pumpkin. Also found out that it was good grated in a salad (preferable to boiled).

3. sour stringy thing—some sort of snack that people will buy. Horrendous to the uninitiated. Very hard exterior that looks like something that you wouldn’t really eat but since they sold it in the market I thought we could buy it. you have to crack the outer shell (easiest with machete or ponga knife or throw it against the ground) and the inside there are lots of strings and pieces of spongy stuff that kind of looks like soft cheese that are really sour. And that’s all I can say about it…not my idea of a nice snack. We sent the rest of it home with beria because she said her son loves them. (sararh 1917)

4. Zambian eggplant- well, I’m just guessing it is a type of eggplant since beria had never seen them before. And when we cooked them they were a little bitter like eggplant can be. The outside was whitish yellow and they were small…maybe the size of large eggs. The insides did look like eggplant. I wasn’t crazy about the way I prepared them (just stir-fried) but I really wanted another chance…sadly a trip to zambia wasn’t in the cards that quickly.

5. About a month ago we bought some dried leaves. They are called telele…I’ve since found out that telele is the Chichewa word for okra, so we were eating okra leaves…but there is a special and specific way to prepare them (which of course we don’t know). We’d told/asked Beria about them (even though we don’t live there anymore) and she told us we wouldn’t be able to do it, but that she would prepare them for us or help us or something. But of course we never really got that planned and these leaves just sat in our kitchen. As they were dried they lasted a long time and one night we were preparing rice and beans and the beans were cooking away for the hours that it takes and we threw in onion, tomato and the telele. We thought it was good, but Malawians are not convinced.