Mwabonwa! (Welcome!)

Mwabuka buti! After a short hiatus, welcome to the – no doubt eagerly anticipated – Zambian installment of Live Below the Line. I’m into the fourth week of my trip and returned to Livingstone today from Nakazuka village in Kasungula District, where I’ll be spending the majority of my time between now and the end of June.

Meet the family

Titus, Sylvia and their five children – Melvin, Steven, Veronica, Alfred and Leonard (aka Dembo) – live on a smallholding in Nakazuka village, along with 25 goats, 10 cows, 7 dogs, a couple of cats, a handful of chickens and one (now sadly deceased) puff adder.

Titus

Sylvia

 

Melvin

Steven

Vero

Alfred

Dembo

Titus is a small-scale farmer, growing a variety of crops for both consumption and sale, and as rural Zambians go, the family are food secure and have a relatively stable income from the sale of livestock and crops, particularly maize. 

 

For those of you aware of my (virtually) lifelong aspirations towards miniature zoo-keeping, Nakazuka is a haven for tiny animals:

                            

Food for thought

Maize is the staple crop of almost all Zambian smallholders, and the mainstay of the Zambian diet. Most commonly, it is ground to produce mealie meal (used for nsima and mealie porridge), although it is also eaten boiled or roasted on the cob, as samp (removed from the cob and boiled until soft), as popcorn or even brewed into the local bukoko (sweet beer). I have yet to ascertain whether this is, in fact, alcoholic, although I am inclined to think otherwise, given that three-year-old Leonard drinks about ten cups a day of the stuff:

maize beer

Nothing is wasted - the stalks are composted and the leaves used as fuel. Alfred has even found a novel use for the cobs as oxen for his miniature cart:

 

Aside from maize, Titus also grows rape (a type of green vegetable, similar to kale), spring onions, aubergines, impwas (a local variety of baby aubergines), pumpkins, cowpeas (green beans), velvet beans (broad beans), groundnuts (peanuts), sweet potatoes and sunflowers at various times of the year, and there is a roaring local trade in fruit, particularly oranges.

harvesting oranges

A typical day’s menu

Breakfast: sweet potatoes and a cup of sweet tea

 

Lunch: nsima and tomato and spring onion sauce with omelette, fried cabbage or fried aubergine

Dinner: nsima and tomato and spring onion sauce with boiled rape or mustard spinach, omelette or kapinta (tiny dried fish)

nsima, omlette, tomato and spring onion sauce

nsima and kapinta

nsima, omlette, fried aubergine and tomato and spring onion sauce

 Snacks: baobab pods, bobola nuts (chickpeas), bananas, oranges, guava, roasted groundnuts, boiled pumpkins, local cucumbers

baobab fruit

Regrettably, I had a somewhat extreme birthday foray into the world of e-numbers, additives and artificial flavours:

Anyway, that’s all for now – I should be back in a fortnight or so with a second installment. Until then, twalumba!

PS: A massive thankyou to everyone who's donated already - anyone who hasn't and would like to, please visit my Live Below the Line for Restless Development page at https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/pipcrockett

(Day 4 and) Day 5

It's the final countdoooooooooown, du du duuuuu duuuuu etc. etc. Only 6 hours to go until it's over! Unfortunately, those 6 hours include socialising, which means I'll be the scrooge subversively drinking orange squash in the corner of the bar. Worse still, I won't even have purchased said squash in said bar - I'll have brought it from home - so I'll also be worrying about getting caught. Unless anyone wants to stay past midnight, in which case, it's gin all round...

Apologies for the lack of update yesterday - I was too hungry to write (disclaimer: this may be a total exaggeration and I was actually too busy catching up on Silent Witness and Grey's Anatomy to spare a blogging minute, but probably not). Nothing too exciting to report from today either, except that in celebration of Good Friday (which I think counts as Easter?) I had a hard-boiled egg, followed by my last custard cream, to make almost-a-Creme-Egg. In fact, I have been eating a lot of eggs  - partly in deference to the the upcoming Christian festivities and mostly because it's the only remaining alternative to another tin of kidney beans:

Last night's dinner

Amazingly, I managed the whole of yesterday without consuming a single grain of rice. My second lunchtime pasta and tomato puree creation of the week was so good I even had some leftovers to go with the boiled egg bonanza. Tell me it doesn't look delicious:

NB the photography hasn't done it justice

Anyway - it's over and out for a few weeks. I'll be back with Part 2 - Live Below the Line Zambia Edition: Nsima Nights - at the beginning of May.
 
Finally - here are a few tips (with the benefit of hindsight) for anyone considering giving it a go:

• BUY POTATOES: what can you do with rice? Boil it. What can you do with pasta? Boil it. What can you do with a potato? Boil it, mash it, bake it, make chips, make wedges... Really, the possibilities are endless. I'm having a small weep just thinking about it.
• Buy bread - you could have toast for breakfast, you could make a sandwich, you could have boiled eggs and soldiers. Also, you can eat it straight away (I realise this probably should have been top of my list considering I don't like pasta or kidney beans, even on a good day, but who says common sense has anything to do with it?).
• Basically, don't buy rice or pasta. It takes 2 days to cook, isn't nutritious and tastes pretty rubbish with nothing on it. 
• Fruit and vegetables are an investment. I've probably got scurvy from my lack of vitamin C intake this week.
• Custard creams are always a winner and - I've said it before but I'll say it again - a total barg at 0.31 for two whole rows of them. 
• I think what this all boils down to (no pun intended) is to actually plan what you're going to eat rather than buying a load of cheap ingredients that don't add up to proper meals.

Okay - I'm off to plan the most efficient way to make a sandwich in preparation of 1 minute past 12.

PS. sign up at https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk - if the fundraising's putting you off then it's okay to choose a low target. I want your round-the-world Live Below the Line photos!



Visit my Live Below the Line for Restless Development fundraising page at https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/pipcrockett

Day 3

Good evening, and welcome to Live Below the Line: The Rice Edition.

First things first - I don't know whether any of you have been party to a vicious rumour currently circulating regarding an apparent Condiment Heist. In order to counter any future accusations of foul-play, and significantly improve the taste of my remaining meals, the remainder of my budget will be allocated entirely to sodium chloride. In Tescos, that will buy you about one and a half of these (cup included for scale):

Perhaps even more worrying than the outright salt-and-pepper slander to which I have been subject this afternoon is how much I miss ready-made food and drinks. In an ordinary week, the highlight of my day might have been a Venti chai latte or a packet of Leerdammer (or half a litre of gin, what with it being a Wednesday and all). Which, incidentally, would have taken up 75, 70, and 150 percent respectively of my budget for the week. So, instead, the highlight of today was walking home with my iPod on very loud and pretending I was in a film. Or maybe visiting Starbucks (twice) to inhale the coffee aroma.

In other news - I think last night's chilli-sin-chilli is the culinary truimph of the week so far. It tasted of something (not chilli, but it definitely had a taste), and the nutritional content is inevitably enhanced ten-fold by the pulses. On a less positive note, by the time I came to eat the leftovers at lunchtime today - after forgoing breakfast for the third day in a row because I just can't face boiled eggs without soldiers - I was so hungry that I ate molten kidney beans and really burnt my mouth. 

Even more unfortunately, a mindless mid-afternoon extravagance with an 0.18 banana meant that I couldn't justify peas for my egg fried rice this evening. After Monday's 'rice, eggs and peas', and today's 'rice and eggs', I'm sensing a pattern for Friday...Thankfully, there are a still a few custard creams left.

Today, I'm only eating yellow food

Finally - I'm still looking for other people to join in on 7th-11th May and contribute their Live Below the Line photos from across the globe (India, Kenya, Glasgow, CMB) to this blog. Obviously, in terms of cooking complexity, mine will be a hard act to follow, but if you fancy giving it a go (don't worry we're all winners here, it's the taking part that counts, etc. etc.) then sign up at: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk

Total spend: £5.00 (weep). 


Visit my Live Below the Line for Restless Development fundraising page at https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/pipcrockett

The Beginning

So - here we are in Edinburgh on Day 2 of the Live Below the Line challenge. Unfortunately, Day 1 was lost in a haze of egg-fried rice and essay misery - and a near-miss with a crispy cake - but never fear, I've survived and I'm here to update you with my progress so far...

My minimal planning and preparation and distinct lack of culinary imagination and expertise has already started to show, although - as you'll see from the picture - the ingredients I've chosen aren't exactly inspiring. In fact, if anyone knows how to combine pasta, rice, beans (carb overload, anyone?) and eggs into a meal then please do share your wisdom. What was I thinking?

My Live Below the Line shopping basket includes:

• Rice (0.40)
• Pasta (0.55)
• 2 tins kidney beans (2 @ 0.18). Yuck.
• 5 red onions (0.17)
• 2 cartons of passata (2 @ 0.29)
• 10 eggs (1.19). While we're on it, I should probably share with you the untold anguish of being assured by multiple sources that a certain German retailer is the cheapest around, only to find that you can buy 15 (yes, one five) eggs for £1.25 in the Tescos that you usually shop in.
• 2 bananas (2 @ 0.11)
• Peas (0.25)
• Teabags (80 @ 0.29 - I'm budgeting 0.04 to use 10 altogether. I feel 80 teabags in 5 days might be somewhat excessive, even for a Northern lass) 

I spent yesterday cooking up a veritable tornado in the kitchen, producing an assortment of culinary classics including 'pasta and tomato puree' and 'rice, eggs and peas'. Unbelievably, I think this actually still looks better than it tasted:

My clever plan to save my leftover pennies for later in the week has already gone down the pan after I went wild this afternoon and purchased a bottle of orange squash (0.29) and a packet of custard creams (0.31), ostensibly in celebration of my essay hand-in but really because I was a little bit starving and didn't want rice. I've already managed to eat about 100 but fortunately there are still a few left. 

Anyway, I am off to put beans and tomatoes in a pan and stir them - this is Live Below the Line haute cuisine.

Total spend: £4.32

Visit my Live Below the Line fundraising page at https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/pipcrockett