"Where do you get your food?"

One of the most frequently asked questions I get is about the food here.  Where does it come from and what is it like.

We try and get our food from Blantyre market.  Most of the food that comes into town starts at Blantyre market.  

Blantyre Market - Produce Section

 The further away from the market you are the more expensive the food gets.  There is a little market right behind our house.  If we need to run and get some tomatoes or onions really quick we will pay a higher price because those things were bought in the Blantyre market and resold there with a mark up.  

 Olive buying eggs.  The little baggies hanging there are filled with cooking oil.

My nieces Olive and Mada buying tomatoes from an overly interested market guy.

Malawians eat pretty much everything in a tomato and onion "soup" (sauce).  The price of tomatoes gets really expensive after rainy season because it is a bit of an off season for them.  I asked the girls if we could cook a few meals without any tomatoes and they gave me a look as if I asked them to starve themselves for a week.  Variations of any kind are unwelcome!

We also eat a lot of nsima.  Corn is ground up into a flour and bleached in the sun.  The flour is then boiled until it turns into a harder mashed potato like consistency.  It tastes like nothing.  I asked if you could put spices in it.  That was apparently a silly question.  Normally maize (corn) is cheap this time of year after harvest.  I was very surprised to see that it is still expensive to which Cashion informed me the elections are next year.  Okay... what does that have to do with anything?  Well apparently the politicians buy it up in mass quantities causing the prices to spike up so they can then "donate" bags of it during their campaign trails.  Fantastic. 

For all the things that people are used to buying in first world countries there is Shoprite.  A store full of imported items that are very expensive.

Shoprite

Food is our biggest expense and a constant challenge for our family.  I have to say I can't wait to visit back home and have a nice juicy Omaha Steak :)