an African sauce recipe you can try at home!

Every Tuesday Rebecca and I go to Miriama’s hut. We enjoy hours of hanging out, language practice, culture learning and food! Each week, we make our favorite meal with Miriama. We bring the baguettes and she makes a wonderful sauce called “Chapatta sauce” which is named after the tree leaf they puree into it.

Today the kids are on school break so we wanted to bring them with us and have fun. So today Rebecca and I went with our little list of notes to the market and managed to buy all the ingredients ourselves. We showed up and told Miriama today was her day to kick back and relax and drink tea and let us make her family lunch! We had a great time and lots of laughs. And in the end- we were told our sauce was excellent! Every last morsel and drop was eaten. As they say in Tamasheq IZOD! (yummy!)

So for those of you at home- you can make the same recipe. We use a mortar and pestle and tree leaves, you can use your blender or food processer and spinach. Or be brave and go get some leaves off your tree! Here is the recipe. Totally yummy to serve with baguettes. You tear off the bread and use it as a spoon to eat this thick sauce. Let me know if you did it!

 

Miriama giving direction – we wouldn’t let her work!

 

The sauce is almost done. This is what it should look like.

Ingredients (for 2-3 people)

squash (Any kind) – at least 1 cup cubed raw

onion – 1 large- sliced

potatoes – at least 1 cup cubed raw

hot peppers- 2 small – pureed (add more if you like it spicy!)

garlic- 5 cloves- pureed

oil – 1/3 cup

smooth peanut butter – 1/3 cup (more if you like that peanuty taste!)

spinach – 2 packed cups of leaves, then puree or pound them down to a puree

tomato paste – 1/3 cup

salt – 2 tsp or to taste

bouillon cubes (preferably chicken)- two cubes (about 2 tsp)

Directions:

heat your oil in a pot. Add pureed garlic and hot peppers. Add onion. Let simmer a couple minutes. Add peanut butter and tomato paste and mix well. Add 1 cup water and let simmer a couple minutes. Don’t let it burn to your pot! Add squash and a little more water if it is too thick. Let simmer a few more minutes. Add your pureed leaves or spinach and keep simmering. Add your salt and bouillon. Add 1 more cup of water. If it still looks thick add more water as you need to. You don’t want it runny like thin soup, but you don’t want it really thick like chili either. Add potatoes and simmer on low, stirring often, until the potatoes and squash and both really soft and easily mushed with a fork.

Serve hot with fresh baguette. Tear off chunks of bread and use the bread as spoons and eat from a communal pot in a circle for the full African experience! Hope some of you try this- it is easy and awesome!

 

Here are some more pictures of our meal today!

Bennett likes the job of pounding. He pounded up all the garlic, spices, peppers and tree leaves!

Everyone getting their “bread spoon” in there!

Arielle digging in! She is always the last one to walk away from the platter, even using her fingers to get every last drop!

A picture Bennett took of Miriama’s mom watching us all cook. She thought it was great fun and next week it is her turn to cook and join our cooking competition! Normally it is her daughter who cooks all the time, so we are excited to see what she comes up with.

Yaargh!

Just a quick photo to make you smile. I promise I have another blog half written that is much more content filled!!

Today was the last day of school for the kids before their Spring Break 2 weeks off. It was a carnival theme and they had to dress up in costumes.

Arielle and her best buddy Lily went as “Spanish twins” and Bennett rocked the pirate costume! The best pirate anyone had seen

 

Where did January go?

One of our favourite little boys – Ibrahim. The boy who is perpetually dirty, snotty and half naked, but with the biggest grin you will ever see!

 

It seems like the month of January just flew by! And i barely updated you! Sorry! So, after our return from vacation, here is what went down, in short format!

Arielle and Lily wearing their matching dresses! We bought two in Seville, Spain and Lily and Arielle loved their dresses and look so darn cute together!

 

Paul finished off his project of making 30 metal chairs for Sahel Academy. It took a really long time and he is happy to be done! Now one of our local Tuareg guys who is a painter is painting the final product. Here is Paul goofing around showing how strong his chairs are!

The kids had a carnival day at school where they played all afternoon and won lots of little prizes and had fun!

We also had special visitors in January when Rebecca’s parents came to visit. We enjoyed many great times with them and especially the kids!

We also learned that some games can easily cross cultural and language barriers! Myra brought out a bunch of toy water guns and we brought them out to Fatima’s house. The kids had a BLAST playing water fight and chasing each other all over the yard. (And as you can see in one pic- Bennett chasing the goats!)

We also brought some plastic night flares. You crack these and they stay lit for up to 12 hours! As night fell and we only had the moon overhead, the kids enjoyed writing in the sky with the green sticks and I used slow motion photography to capture them. Even some of the adults got involved!

And then there is also sadness. For many years we have had this huge tree right outside our gate.

It shaded the garden we put outside, the guards straw hut, and was the home to many a weary and hot soul who came to sit on the base of it to visit and escape the unrelenting sun. The tree was a part of our house! Bennett loved playing around it and climbing it too. We had dreams of a tire swing…

Yesterday the city came and cut it down! They are building a wall around the school across the street. The school argued they need a very large courtyard (why?) and that the wall needed to be moved waaayyyyy over to our side of the street. So they shut down our garden, cut down our giant tree, and are moving the entire road over about 10 feet. Yup, that will put it directly in front of our front door. Only a metre off. Not only does it make this road much more dangerous and narrow, it also creates a blind corner and will make it tight to get into our gate. We are NOT happy. Some of the neighbours have tried to fight it since its placement seems highly illogical and dangerous to all of us. But we are just small people. As the people from the mayor said “there is a lot of money, and a lot of people with money, involved.”.  Sigh- seems like the African way.

Please pray for safety as we now have a busy road directly in front of our house. Not sure how long we want to live in this house now.

So…that’s the update for now! I have muffins in the oven for our team potluck tomorrow night so i guess i better get going!

 

Chantelle