Supermarkets make me grumpy

I'm beginning to wonder what is exactly super about them. I remember when I was growing up going to the Stop and Shop in Wilton, CT with my dad every week. It was fun (I had no social life to speak of) and I got to push my own cart around and go look for the sales. That was back when I knew how to function in Supermarkets. Now, supermarkets put me into such a state, my brother won't talk to me for about 15 minutes.

According to my family from the city, supermarkets were a pretty suburban thing. In New York City, you went to the butchers, bakers, grocers...they were all different stores. Now they're all packed into a hermetically sealed environment that could not be further removed from nature. Everything seems to be "buy one get one" nowadays to part us with a few more bucks. Let me try to explain why I don't like supermarkets anymore. First of all, it's a barrage of colors. Things stacked to the ceiling in bright attractive colors are just too much for me to handle. I also am totally lost when I have to pick out new toiletries - too much choice. My biggest supermarket for years was a room about the size of the Chester House TV room (that's for you L) and stocked with one of everything. They had marmite, it made me happy. Supersizing in America has gone to the extreme! It's tricky how they put the biggest size at eye level and any person with a healthy appetite has to go to their knees looking for sensible portions. It's almost as if it's an act of contricition for not buying the gluttonus portions.

The thing that makes me grumpy is that my local store (a ghetto place called thriftway) has more food in it than I saw in my entire village in Africa. Then people just go and eat crap! Even though, to be fair, I did buy and B1G1 of gallon tubs of ice cream.

I'm going to sulk now.

The latest and greatest

Here in the fair city of Maxixe, you don't get much in the way of excitement - especially when anything and everything you and your circle of friends do is viewed as the excitement. But ladies and gentlemen, I would like to announce that the central market has a special. This weeks special is eggplant/aubergine for 20 meticais. I go to my local lady "Big Mama" who gives me good deal so the global price hike doesn't pinch my metical too much. Anyway, I made something absolutely awesome last night. I wish I had taken some pictures of it because it was so good. But hey, I can't be THAT tech savvy here in Africa now can I?

So I bought the eggplant, some tomatoes, onions, LOTS of garlic and some peppers. I basically put it all together and fried the hell out of it for almost an hour meanwhile adding tumeric, tandoori spice, ginger, more garlic, cumin, more garlic, salt and pepper. MY GOD was it good. I made some pooris along with it and it was amazing. But man was it spicey. I brought the left overs into work today for lunch and could barely stomach them because of the spice. They had been in the fridge over night too!

A friend of mine had been over to my house to type up some things on my computer. I agreed to help him do some translations as well. Instead of just staring at him as he cooked though, I decided to bake. Noel and Sam can tell you I cook over two flames basically. But I baked my kitchen clean of plates. I think my housekeeper HATED me this morning because the sink was FULL of plates. I think I only had one mug left over for my regulatory cup of PG TIPS (a hang over from the UK)! I made apple crisp and some butterscotch blondies with fresh cashew nuts in them.

Maybe I should change the title to something to do with food.

YUM!