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Makeshift Spinach Quiche

2 cups of boiled spinach or any other available green
1 onion
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
2 slices of bread
1/4 cup cheese (optional)
4 or 5 cloves garlic
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp chili powder

Sauté the onion and garlic in a little butter or oil until the onion is translucent
Add spinach and spices
Mix egg and milk together in a separate bowl and then add to the spinach mixture
Mix in the cheese, if you are using this option
Line the bottom of a fry pan with breadcrumbs
Add the spinach mixture on top of the crumbs
Cover the fry pan and put coals on top of the cover (in the States you would probably just do this in a baking dish and put the dish in an oven)
Cook until the egg is cooked through and a fork comes out clean (about 5 or 10 minutes)

Well, after spending about three solid months bouncing in and out of the city, I finally returned for my first long stay at site. It was pretty much the same as it's always been. Except that it's dry season right now, so there's not much food, the road has just been re-dirted (it's kind of like being re-paved except well, you get it) and since everyone is burning their fields there's a perpetual haze in the air. Teaching is going well this year. A big part of that is because I am no longer one third of the teaching staff. I really can't emphasize enough how much of a difference this makes.

I also did not anticipate how wonderful it would be to see my Form Three students again. These are the students who were Form Ones when I started teaching, and while it's extremely surreal to see them turning into mini-adults (a few of them got married this past year, to my extreme dissapointment) it's been so wonderful teaching them every day when I think that I could very well have been home missing them.

The food situation though, was a definite downer. You would think that after two years I would have in some way adjusted to the fact that I just can't have certain foods. Nope. Hemingway once said that when he was poor and hungry it really focused his writing, and helped him paint a clearer picture. While I understand the philosophy behind this, I'm really not certain how it led to his short, sharp sentences.

My writing gets positively florid whenever I mention food. I have one story that has simply stalled because two pages ago the main character made the unwise decision to stop into a coffee shop for breakfast, and as of now he still hasn't gotten around to ordering a drink. The coffee shop, on the other hand, has expanded into a bakery/delicatessen/creamery/confectionary - and is still growing.

On the other hand, I've been able to have some food experiences here I would never have gotten in America. The other day, while visiting a wildlife worker friend of mine, I found that he was smoking out his bee hives in preparation for honey harvesting. While I positively cowered a few feet away, he opened up one of the hives and pulled out a fresh slab of comb. After making absolutely sure there were no bees in it, I sucked the honey straight off the wax. It was pretty amazing, and it definitely tasted different from honey you buy in a store. It was another one of those times where I sit back and think "I really couldn't do this in America" (well, that one I could, but I wouldn't) and those are the things that make being here, even after two years, still new and exciting and cool.