Gambia - November 4th, 2006

Where did the summer go??? I think I fell asleep and then I woke up and it was November. Well, not quite. What happened is that I've got another job and ended up doing my old job plus my new job plus my new boss' job who as soon as he hired me announced that he was moving to Australia. Lucky him! But what a hell for me. Anyway, got a new boss (a nice one), they hired a replacement for my old position so things are looking up a bit. Almost. Not there yet, but almost. Hopefully by February things will be back to normal and I will able to resume having a life. February being my deadline for things to get better or look for an alternative solution. I am just not cut out for this life where work is not only the biggest thing in one's life but the only thing.

Thankfully, I managed to take a week off at the end of October and went to Spain with Eric. It rained - a lot - so we spent a lot of time in bars and coffee places and cervecerias... which was great as the food is wonderful. I fell in love with Jamon Iberico. Could not eat enough of it (and it showed on the scale). Also, we found this wonderful tapa, Pimiento del Padron, a variety of chilly peppers that you saute' in olive oil and serve with salt. Can't find the pimientos on sale over here but Eric was able to find a site that sells the seeds so we'll plant them next spring (right next to the zucchini so we can have zucchini blossom and pimiento del padron next year).

Anyway, because I've had little life in the past few months, I have been unable to entertain anyone or cook for anyone. Eric has been doing all the cooking (and I've not heard him complain). I even bought him a new stove for his birthday: a nice 36in Wolf, gas, with six burners. Cost me an arm and a leg but at least I get lovely meals. I've used it for the first time yesterday to prepare the Gambian dinner. And I have to say that the results were really good!

Finding recipes wasn't easy but after a little debating with Eric, we finalized the menu and aside from the dessert (OK, so cous cous really doesn't go well as dessert!) the dinner was really really good. As the wine was flowing, so was the conversation and we really had a good time. Have to report that this morning I really didn't feel 100% so my resolve to get up and run 5 miles went out of the window. Not even watching the NYC marathon got me inspired to hit the road. So, on account of a pulled hamstring, I decided to stay home and do little. Didn't really even properly get up from bed until 12.30pm (wanted to finish reading my book - Eureka - as I was really curious to find out where the plot was going), decided to start working a bit (took A LOT of motivation and many many breaks and snacks), watch old movies on tv and then even made it to the pub for an afternoon beer.

The fall in Atlanta is really beautiful. Our street is in multicolor although there are lots of leaves to be picked up (12 bags yesterday afternoon and the trees haven't even shed half their leaves yet).... of course, this allow me to do a little more exercise and hopefully shed a few pounds before the holidays... well one can hope in a miracle.

Dan and Jan were our guests last night. They liked their food and scored the recipes really high aside from dessert. Dan brought some Pakistani treats that we just had to try... let me tell you a quick story: one of the alphabetical dinners last summer (2005) was Pakistan. Dan has a Pakistani relative and so I was able to get some authentic recipes! And it was the first time that I scored a perfect ZERO. I had to set up a rule that no negative scoring on my recipes is allowed or I would have gone below zero on dessert that night. Infact one of the recipe that Dan gave me for dessert called for 5 cups of powdered milk and the result was some chewy sweet concoction that we decided was inedible but that was great to make little animals out of (well, ok that might have been on account of the wine). Well, lo and behold, last night we had a chance to try the "real thing".... except, well, it tasted exactly the same as the concoction I made. So, I've got a zero on taste but at least now I know the recipe was right!!!

Back to the Gambian food. I had some reservation over the starter, pepper soup, as I was afraid it would have been too hot, but what do you know? Everyone at the table thought it was wonderful! It is said that this recipe could cure someone of the common cold. Nobody was sick last night but I guess I can try again next time Eric or I get a bit of a sneeze!!! The recipe was really simple, just had a lot of pepper in it (one tablespoon of black pepper and one tablespoon of red pepper) and it was nice and thick and went really well on steamed white rice.

The main course was also very nice although I really did make a lot of it! I think we are going to be eating leftovers for the rest of the week. All in all it was a great cold weather food. Strange, considering that Gambia isn't quite a cold country - on the contrary, it is in Western Africa so it is rather hot! But I am finding more and more that many countries in Africa eat stews, possibly because they are very filling. I didn't have much time to read about Gambia, but I once worked with a woman who went there on holidays and said she really liked it (of course, she was in a resort so I don't know how much of the real thing she really saw). It's the smallest country in Africa and it is surrounded by Senegal on all sides except on the Atlantic coast and it has a "The" in front of its name (it's really The Gambia). And despite it's biggest export is peanuts, I did not use them in any of my recipes last night. I purposely did this as I felt that my last few dinners from African countries had lots of peanuts in the various plates. Instead I went for simple foods that allowed me to use different spices and different vegetables (lots of veggies in the stew although it was not a vegetarian dish since it had chicken and beef in it).

If you're interested in finding out more about the Gambia, you can look at http://www.gambia.dk/gam.html. I skimmed through it... lots of info about the history of the country.

Below is the menu with scores. The recipes are included in the blog also. If any of you get to try any of my recipes, let me know the outcome! I'd be curious to know how different people would score the foods...

Menu
Appetizer - Pepper Soup - Avg score: 9.8

Main Course - Chicken and Beef Benachin - Avg score: 8.5

Dessert - Chakery- Avg score: 3.2 (there's plenty of this left but I don't know that anyone will eat more of this....)

Next dinner: Honduras. Stay tuned!