Creative cooking.

For the past few weeks, my usual lunch provider, my counterpart's wife, Vivian, has been out of town. Normally, she doesn't get to go anywhere much because she's always super busy with every possible household chores and then some. (My counterpart, Peter doesn't help much either. Wither her being gone, there were left two people who had to cook to feed themselves. I can't really speak for Peter, but I was quite ready for the challenge of not starving without her. It's a challenge because I opted to not buy a gas stove when I first came to site. There were several reasons behind this. - I wanted to eat Ghanaian food cooked by Ghanians. - The sparse food produces in Ghana did not inspire any culinary inclination in me, I simply didn't know what I would of could make. ( I hate/don't know how to cook beans, eggplants, okra...) - And figuring how to lug a gas cylinder and stove top back to site was the furthest idea from fun, and then having to commit to the task of refilling the gas cylinder every few months also did not appeal. So I bought a coal pot and called it a day. It was really my lucky break that Vivian loves to feed me and is an amazing cook. So for the last year and a half, I would buy the monthly food products, and she would prepare lunch for me everyday. During training at homestay, my host sister provided me with considerable amount of Ghanaian food, but Vivian's cooking allowed me to learn more about all the local cuisines made with local ingredients -- eating soup made from bush leaves, flowers, ect... Otherwise, I probably would either slowly desiccate or get MSG poisoning from overloading on ramen, or just have terrible acne. With that system in place, I had a routine. Regardless of what I was doing, lunch is serve at around noon or 1pm, and I would never be hungry afterward. Lunch is my favorite meal in Ghana because Vivian would feed me to the point that I can't walk straight or have to stand slightly bend forward. She always wants to make up for my lackluster breakfast (popcorns) and dinner (nothing). It used to take me 45 minutes to light the coal pot and the idea of making a meal died with every dead match mounting in piles. Slowly, I started to get better at lighting the coal pot, and would be able to make hot water for tea without losing the entire morning trying. That allowed me to sporadically cook now and then -- still just ramen though, nothing serious. But with Vivian gone, I had to step it up. I stocked up on enough veggies that would not rot for 4-5 days without a fridge and other miscellaneous carby things that I generally dislike but still tolerate like bread and pasta. (Though I look forward to the day when I never have to eat bread ever again). Every morning, I made a fire, boiled water and cooked creative dishes from the 5 ingredients I have available. I managed to have soup, pasta salad, moringa omelette and only ate real ramen twice. Eggs were my main proteins but a PCV friend recently went to Germany and brought back some summer sausages, and I put some in every meal and they were delicious! Summer sausages, what a treat! It had been really fun cooking this way, pretending sometime that I was going camping somewhere in the wild, playing house by myself (I live alone afterall). Ghana has a lot of ingredient that I normally would not opt for back home, but my taste buds have changed over the course of times, and green peppers, bread, tomato sauce found their way into my bowl more often than I though. Probably due to hunger and limited options but I'll go ahead and call it improvement by circumstance. Maybe I can even put that on my resume... The year and a half spent watching Vivian cooks also allowed me to learn a lot about Ghanian cuisine and nutrition, which is good for me when talking about health and nutrition to other community members as a part of my job here. It has been strangely fitting, cooking for myself with a coal pot, to how I had imagined my Peace Corps service would be. Except that, I probably could not manage to do this while actually do other work at the same time. I had to constantly tending fire and cooking during the day time, and by the time I finish and want to rest, it's night and the day is gone. Eating Vivian's food is definitely more authentic, but I enjoyed the autonomy of cooking for myself a lot more than I thought. PCVs talk a lot about the lack of vegetables and fruits in meals, but I enjoyed the pleasures of greens in the form of moringa "the miracle tree", and shea oil (the very same ingredients that makes your lotion or anti-aging make up so expensive is actually used to fry my yam chips and other fried things here.) I think my eating habit is a lot better here than back home (no late night Denny's chicken wings and banana split run -- but I miss it so...) and I hope it sticks when I return in seven months. In the mean time, summer sausages is my latest and greatest cuisine crave. Feel free to send some my way. They don't have to be refridgeratd and is good with everything. What!? So Brilliant! Chau Ngo P.O Box 5736 Accra North, Ghana West Africa.