One of our friends wrote us and asked what we ate everyday on a daily basis. So I thought I would let all of you know. The main food here in Ghana is rice, and big yams (cassavo sp?) and things made with dough flour and they have that as the basis of most of their dishes. I think a lot our missionaries mostly eat rice with about 1 ounce of chicken in all different ways from little stands on any street here. We try and convince them to cook more at their apartments and with more variety and that all those stands are not clean etc. etc. but you know how invincible they are at that age.
When the Senior Missionaries get together one of the things we talk about food, where we discover certain foods. i.e. I found some powder baking chocolate in the coffee/tea section of a store. Something that is hard to find here.( By the way did you know that Ghana is the #1 exporter of Cocoa in the world.) One of our missionaries served lasagna, with lasagna noodles tonight no one has been able to find them before. There are about 6 or 7 stores to go to in Accra, that have some western type food, and many of the Senior Missionaries go to 3-4 grocery stores every Saturday to find food. Terry and I usually only go to 1 or 2, but maybe a different one every week. Even if we have gotten something we like from a certain store, there is no guarantee that they would have it the next time.
On Sunday night, we usually have dinner with 3 other couple missionaries that live in our apartment complex.
We usually have a very good meal that night. We do not eat a lot of meat it is very expensive and not very good. The Chicken is very tough - they have a tough life here, they are all living on the street, look very skinny. The beef is even worse, most of the time, you might not be getting beef, but goat. A couple to the stores here have goat heads in meat display cases. Also the meat aisle at one of the stores we go to smells so bad, we can hardly walk down that aisle, we have never bought meat there. The Nielsen's the missionary couple that live in Asamankese (the bush) they bought some chicken from a market where they have a freezer, a rarity in area. When she picked some out, the man asked her if she would like it cut, she said yes. and he took it to this old wooden table that looked like it had not been washed between the cutting and he cut it there. As he was wrapping the chicken up she was relieved to see that it did get washed between cuttings, two cats jumped right up there and licked it all off.
I do buy either a lb of ground beef or a lb of chicken once a week and make beef& beans or chicken casserole once a week and we usually have it for 2 dinners and maybe a lunch also. On another night we might just have a baked potato with cheese grated on it or with some beans. we usually have beans someway a couple of nights. Once a week we usually have pasta - I have a place where I can buy a can of Hunts pasta sauce (costs about 1.00 - 1.30 in USA) for about $7.00 here . For lunch, since we live one door from our office - I usually make a salad for us sometimes with canned Kirkland Chicken , or with some tuna, when we are going someplace for lunch, we have our basic peanut butter (ground nut) sandwich.
On Saturday, we had a Relief Society meeting.they asked me to teach them to make Pizza, which I did even though there is not any cheese to buy in the little town that our Branch is in.I also showed them how to make tortillas, and beans and rice - they do not eat a lot of beans, even though they are expensive.
Terry is too tired to write tonight he will write tomorrow
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