Mushroom soup
The rains started a couple of weeks ago. Not a very good start at that. This time last year the quarry pits next to the college were flooded; people were bringing their livestock to drink and filling Jerry Cans. This year there is just a little mud at the bottom.
But it did rain. A bit. And after a few days of that dampness, there was something oddly tan coloured all over the termite mound next to my house. My friend Jackson (VSO volunteer from Uganda who lives down the road) came by and told me it was spores of mushrooms. Sure enough, three days later, the termite mound was covered in what looked like small white flowers (small white flat toped mushrooms with split caps that look like petals). Jackson harvested them!
He brought them back to my house yesterday. He’d sun-dried them on the roof of his house and wanted to share a Ugandan dish with me. We went to Tala market, it was market day and everything was very busy. We found a Mama in the covered section who was selling beans and flour. He bought a large bag of peanuts… and took them to the posho mill.
The Posho Mill is where maize gets ground into maize flour for making Ugali (discussed earlier on this blog). He convinced the woman to toss his nuts into the machine 
After a few minutes of the machine making its normal deafening noise, nothing came out. After a while longer nothing much continued to come out and the woman shook it a bit. We left with a small bag of what looked mostly like maize meal but tasted slightly of peanuts, in a bag about a quarter the size of his bag of peanuts.
We were up the road buying beans when Jackson told me that the woman in the Posho Mill wanted us to go back.
“How do you konw that?”
“They sent a kid to tell me”, he answered, and then, “how did they know where to find us?”
I looked at him to see if he was serious.
“It’s not hard to find me here”
We returned to the Posho Mill to find the grinding machine stopped and in pieces. The woman and a man were peering into it. The man was putting his hands inside, taking out handfulls of slightly brown powder and putting it into a bag. His ground nuts had been located.
Back at my place he mixed the peanut paste with water and the mushrooms and salt. Just that! We ate it with Matoke: green banannas boiled and mashed. wonderful!
I’m planning to spend Xmas in Uganda, visiting Jackson’s home. If the food is anything like this soup (he tells me you can substitute dried fish if you dont have mushrooms and it tastes even better) I’m in for a happy season. When that’s all done, my plan takes me to Lamu on the Kenyan coast for new year and then back to Tala for the last month.
Cad Says:
I’m hungry now
A kebab from the van (even with extra special sauce) doesn’t quite seem to compare somehow.
Speaking of which, there is a very silly TV program on at the moment called “Braniac - Science Abuse”, which usually consists of a bunch of scientists (probably) performing hazardous experiments.
One problem they set for themselves recently was “How to prepare doner kebabs for the entire crew, in the shortest possible time, starting with raw ingredients (including the meat on the ‘gyros’)”.
Predictable but amusing, they each prepared a pitta bread and loaded it with salad.
Then they bored out a cylinder down the centre of the meat and stuffed sticks of TNT in there.
The theory was that, upon detonation, the TNT would instantly reach a temperature of (something very hot) degrees, cook the meat and then distribute it outwards.
And they actually did it! A huge bang, bits of meat everywhere, folk gingerly picking bits up from the ground and loading their kebab.
The meat didn’t look very well cooked though, more like the remains of the whale in the crater from “Hitch Hikers”.
December 15th, 2005 at 1:55 amShelley Says:
My friend, have a great Christmas in Uganda.
I got back this morning from my work trip to DRC. It was strange to be back in Africa so soon after ‘leaving’ but a very positive experience in a fascinating country. Was even in Nairobi for a very few hours yesterday. I made a dash from the airport to collect my boxes and baskets but wished I could stay longer to see you.
I’m listening to Jools Holland’s show on my brand new broad band connection - not quite used to having such functional things again. Its great.
See you in February. Come and stay. We miss you.
December 18th, 2005 at 6:52 am