So, what do you eat?

I have to say, it's one of the most common questions, yet I have failed to address it in this blog! So here it is, my food post.

In a lot of ways, it's simple. I eat the same things most days..

For lunch it's a community bowl, usually rice with one fish (fried, stuffed with pepper and spices) and veggies (seasonal; currently we've been getting eggplant, potato, cabbage, and squash). Other lunch dishes are rice with a peanut sauce with okra; or, a millet, bean and fish mush with oil (a lot better than it sounds I promise, though my family rarely makes it).

A bowl of the more meager variety, no fresh fish, but rice and veggies, dried fish and beans

For dinner it's a dish called haako (the dish has the same name as 'leaves'.. because that's what it is, leaf sauce!). It's made with bean leaves, peanuts, and fish all ground together poured over cornmeal 'cous-cous' called lecciri (pronouced: leh-chee-ree). I put 'cous-cous' in quotes because it's a lot grainier than the cous-cous you can buy in the states. Another dinner dish is called bassi which is this onion soup-esk dish with peanut butter and tomato sauce poured over lecciri. On other nights we have lecciri and fresh or reconstituted milk. My house most often eats the haako, but these are the 3 staples.

Haako (with beans!) and corn lecciri

I've saved breakfast for last because I eat that on my own, and therefore it varies. My family eats plain bread and coffee (though I argue to call it hot sugar water) so I chose to eat breakfast on my own. Sometimes I still buy bread and peanut butter, but more often I eat oatmeal, or a Clif bar, or if I've saved some lecciri from dinner the night before I'll make that with milk.

Otherwise, there's a lot of snacks as well. My good friend Ndiabel loves to feed me other than mealtimes, this last week alone she cooked a few meal/snacks: sweet potato tomato onion sauce, bean sauce, and fish and  fries with onion sauce (as you can tell, the same ingredients are recycled in many manners). Also, buying snacks on the street is easy enough, and range from tiny bags of roasted peanuts, frozen juice in bags (creme glace/"ice cream"), roasted corn (seasonal) to deep fried goodies such as beignets (donut holes) or fatayas (dough stuffed with onion sauces, sometimes fish). This is not including your usual selection at the corner shop: biscuits, cookies, cheese puffs (which are hilariously called Crax) and others of the "junk food" variety.

Though of all this great selection, my favorite snack has to be Vache Qui Rit (Laughing Cow cheese) with Mauritanian biscuits, occasionally with dried fruit if the care-package gods have blessed me. I have appeased my foodie side by convincing myself that Vache Qui Rit is something like Brie...

The best for last being.. frozen kossam! (Kossam is sour milk, or essentially yogurt... meaning frozen yogurt.) Often sold in quarter liter bags, it makes those 115 degree days bearable and delicious. Slice up one of those huge mangoes that are now in season and sold on the streets, and I think it almost puts any froyo shop in CA to shame.