reliant on convenient

nothing happens fast in africa, especially cooking. the first trip to the grocery store happened several days after we arrived and i almost burst into tears. granted i was exhausted and adjusting to a new culture and everything was in french but on top of the reason list for crying was 1. feel like a complete moron. now, at this point i could blame my mother for not teaching me how to "really" cook, but i only have myself to blame as i am 33 years old and have had a family for almost 6 years and a husband for 8. i could have done something about this before now!

as i was perusing the grocery store aisles trying to decipher by the pictures what was in the cans or boxes or bags one thought kept running through my mind, "how did i survive in the states? let alone what did i feed my family?!" because nothing i saw seemed feasible to keep a family of four full. because nothing was instant! or convenient!!! and the few items that were, were imported and therefore atrociously expensive. no kraft mac and cheese, no tater tots, no cans of vege meat, no frozen meals, no alot of things!!!!!

now of course i knew things would be limited but i never actually thought about how i would turn those limited things into meals. it became very clear, very fast that unless i learned some basic cooking strategies my family would starve. it is all about being creative and thrifty because due to the high cost of food as alot of it is imported you have to make things last a lot longer and you have to be really creative because you can only eat boiled eggs plain so many days in a row, or have plain spaghetti so many nights a week.

having lived in The United States of America my whole life i have become reliant on convenient. i never thought that having a super target 5 minutes from my house actually might be detrimental later on. but i am finding that the case. we go and go and go and go in America and we survive because there are so many conveniences, ways of doing things fast, like cooking. i never learned basic cooking from scratch. yes, i did alot of baking and was pretty good at it, but not cooking, where i could make a meal from "scratch." grocery shopping consisted of once a week or every two weeks strolling (well not with small children) through target or king soopers seeing something that i thought looked good and fast and buying it. every once in awhile i would whip up one or the other of the two casseroles my mom used to make but hardly ever deliberately make a meal from basic ingredients. things are going to have to change.

in order to survive here, i will need to go back to the basics. i will keep you posted on how that comes along.

ps. i have baked banana bread and craisin scones as well as cooking french toast and things that resemble pancakes since i have been here!