food thoughts

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Coming up: a trip to Toubacouta, which will include a day/night spent with a host family in a village called Keur Moussa Sèny; a stopover for lunch in the towns of Sokone and Kaolack; a lesson in djembe drumming; and a wrestling match (une lutte traditionelle).  We leave at 8am tomorrow and return around 5pm on Monday.  Also coming up: Mom’s visit to Senegal!  I’m in the process of designing an itinerary, which will include a trip to Saint Louis and Ile de Gorée.  It should be fabulous.

On my walk to school this morning, I started making another list.  (This is a good thing to do when walking for 40 minutes.)  The latest list: Tasty Things in Dakar.

• Yassa – thick sauce of slow-cooked onions with lemon, served on rice or pasta with some kind of meat.
• Café Touba / ak mew – the spiced coffee served in tiny plastic cups, which you can order with powdered milk (“ak mew”).
• Bouye – sweet, thick juice from the fruit (called “monkey bread,” or pain de singe) of the baobab.  Best yet has been at La Palace, where they serve it without ice cubes and without watering it down.  Pictures below.

• “Fondé” – I don’t actually know what is in this kind of warm pudding.  My host sister made it for me and it was delicious.
• Thiakry – yogurt and millet, mixed together.  Sold in packaged plastic cups in stores or in plastic bags off the street.
• Blood oranges, mangos, bananas – so much good fresh fruit.
• Brochette – the beef here is excellent, and kebab-like sticks of cooked meat are delicious.
• Jaff – sweetened or salty peanuts, sold in tiny plastic bags at the side of the road.
• Biscuten – a kind of cookie--coconut-flavored with chocolate-filling--that comes in black packages of 4.
• Ataaya – sweet black tea and mint, served in three increasingly-sugary stages. 

drinking bouye at La Palace