Coming to Swaziland, I had a lot of assumptions one of them being that I would be eating rice and beans every day. Not that that would have been bad in any shape or form, but I have just been blow away with the food we have been blessed with. We eat oh so good. A nice home cooked meal every single night!! Thank you Dolly!!!!! ( our cook) I have been getting a lot of questions about what the food is like here, so I am going to tell you what we eat!!
Traditional Swazi food.
We have two Swazi meals a week. One being chicken, samp, and beats. The spices they use here in the meat are the bomb.com!! I don’t even know how to explain how good the chicken is here. All I can say is it is a baked chicken with delicious spices. Samp is nothing like I have ever had before, so I can not explain it to anything. It is like a corn bean mixture paste haha that probably makes no since, but it does not have much taste. The sauce from the chicken is what amps it up, and give it the taste it needs. They eat beats alotttt here. I had never been a fan until I actually trie them hahah. They are like a sutile dessert. Sweet but not too sweet. The second meal we eat is beef, pop, and butternut squash. The beef like the chicken is decked in yummy spices. Pop is like Samp, but not at all like samp. It looks just like mashed potatoes, but don’t be fooled it is not. It also doesn’t have much taste by itself, but slap some beef sauce on there and bam you got your self some tasty pop. I live for butternut sqaushhhhhh. If I close my eyes it is like a sweet potato! We also had this Christmas party at our care point on October 27th, where they served the food they wood serve at Christmas. All of the gogo’s came to the care point that day, and prepared all of this glorious food. They had rice, beef, fried chicken, beats, and potato salad. We also got bananas, and juice!!!! That was definitely one of my favorite days at the care point. Total side note= the way they decorate for Christmas is with balloons haha.
Fun Swazi snacks!!!
Ice blocks are the highlight of my day by far!!! We get them at our local grocery store everyday after ministry, and all it is is shaved ice and juice in a plastic bag. They also sell these raspberry popsicles with like a custard over it soooooo good. That hits the sport after a hot day at church. We also drink so much liquifruit, which is just this type of juice they sell here. We put it in the freezer and it is the best thing ever. Sugarcane is also a fan favorite. The kids show up at the care point with it a lot after their walk from school where they pick it up. There are these chips called nicnacs, which are a lot like Cheetos, but oh soo good. They also sell these super duper good lemon cookies for cheap, and let me tell you those things are so addicting. They have this certain muffin mix that we use for every thing. We have made banana bread in mugs in the microwave!! It definitely made me miss my moms famous banana bread, but it still was delicious. We also can make pancakes with this muffin mix!!! We even freeze the batter and it taste like ice cream. This invention kinda happened on accident. It is a God send let me tell you. I also have gotten a new addiction to popcorn. I did not even really like popcorn that much at home, but here I can not get enough. We make it every night pretty much with the popcorn kernels from our local grocery store. We make cinnamon popcorn, kettle corn, popcorn with Doritos in it, and any other combination you can think of. I have also found a new love for peanut butter on carrots. Sounds weird I know, but don’t knock it till you try it.
Day to day food
We surprisingly are able to eat a lot of things that we can eat in America. For breakfast, we can choose between making oatmeal or eating up to 3 eggs. We also get four pieces of bread a day, so I normal make some toast with that. We use two of the pieces of bread at lunch for our peanut butter and jelly. We eat at least one every ministry day. Some times two, these have becoming addicting as well. I am surprisingly not tired of them yet, so #ALOT and counting. We also get two things of fruit a day, which is normally apples. We go through apples like cats devour cat nip. For dinner, Dolly switches it up a lot. Some of the fan favs are taco salad, sloppy Joe, mashed potatoes, Mac and cheese, chicken salad, chili, loaded potatoes, spaghetti, barbecue chicken, fried rice, potatoes soup, endless possibilities!!!!
So yeh, we eating gooooood!! Some of the things I do miss is a good cup of coffee. I miss some waffle fries from chick-fa-la, or potstickers. O me oh my do I miss pot stickers. But I know in a month when we leave I am going to miss ice blocks, Nic nacs, the fact that the vanilla ice cream tastes like cake batter, liqui fruit, pop, Samp, shredded beets, and all the other things that Is so unique to swazi.
