LauraR
Cathlete
Well, I looked and looked. I guess I get to start.
I was going to tell you some of the good and bad aspects of trying to manage a healthy diet over here in Africa. Let me share some of the good points today.
1. No fast food. (I mentioned this before.) I would regularly overdose on BK french fries, but they are at least a 4 hour drive plus an 8 hour plane trip away. Makes binging kind of tough!
2. Similarly, there is very little junk food. My mom and I used to clean up a whole bag of Doritos watching football on Saturday. Now, I can only buy them in the capital city, 4 hours away. That cuts down on junk food snacks.
3. Limited supply of processed foods. We can get some, but the variety is small, and many of them are really expensive. So we make our own. We do lots and lots and lots of cooking from scratch. Even wheat crackers and flour tortillas. I eat very few chemical ingredients or preservatives. That's nice to know. I haven't perfected a whole-wheat tortilla recipe that isn't kind of dry, though. The white flour ones I make for my kids roll nicely, but mine kind of pull apart. Any great chefs out there with a nice whole-wheat tortilla or pita recipe? ;-)
4. Fresh fruits and veggies. We have a limited supply (I'll talk about that later in the cons), but what we get is AWESOME. Our tomatoes are to die for. And carrots so sweet! Great pineapple, mango, and bananas. The ones in the US taste like cardboard to me!
5. Meats are all naturally lean because they're not bio-engineered like in the US. I actually have to ADD grease if I cook sausage! Wow.
As far as all the cooking from scratch goes... we all have to do so much of it that we hire help. The nationals here really expect us to hire them--it gives them jobs, and compared to them, we are all very rich. Any of us who can afford this road trip would be considered rich to them. So they love to help out and get a job. So they help me doing all that stuff that I could normally buy--I teach them how to do the crackers, tortillas, etc. basic stuff. That's really nice. I get fresh food and some help.
So, that's the good side of eating here where I live. There are definitely challenges, but there are advantages too.
Hope everyone is having a good weekend!
Laura
I was going to tell you some of the good and bad aspects of trying to manage a healthy diet over here in Africa. Let me share some of the good points today.
1. No fast food. (I mentioned this before.) I would regularly overdose on BK french fries, but they are at least a 4 hour drive plus an 8 hour plane trip away. Makes binging kind of tough!
2. Similarly, there is very little junk food. My mom and I used to clean up a whole bag of Doritos watching football on Saturday. Now, I can only buy them in the capital city, 4 hours away. That cuts down on junk food snacks.
3. Limited supply of processed foods. We can get some, but the variety is small, and many of them are really expensive. So we make our own. We do lots and lots and lots of cooking from scratch. Even wheat crackers and flour tortillas. I eat very few chemical ingredients or preservatives. That's nice to know. I haven't perfected a whole-wheat tortilla recipe that isn't kind of dry, though. The white flour ones I make for my kids roll nicely, but mine kind of pull apart. Any great chefs out there with a nice whole-wheat tortilla or pita recipe? ;-)
4. Fresh fruits and veggies. We have a limited supply (I'll talk about that later in the cons), but what we get is AWESOME. Our tomatoes are to die for. And carrots so sweet! Great pineapple, mango, and bananas. The ones in the US taste like cardboard to me!
5. Meats are all naturally lean because they're not bio-engineered like in the US. I actually have to ADD grease if I cook sausage! Wow.
As far as all the cooking from scratch goes... we all have to do so much of it that we hire help. The nationals here really expect us to hire them--it gives them jobs, and compared to them, we are all very rich. Any of us who can afford this road trip would be considered rich to them. So they love to help out and get a job. So they help me doing all that stuff that I could normally buy--I teach them how to do the crackers, tortillas, etc. basic stuff. That's really nice. I get fresh food and some help.
So, that's the good side of eating here where I live. There are definitely challenges, but there are advantages too.
Hope everyone is having a good weekend!
Laura
