Pesto... almost

Tonight we had pesto for dinner... sort of. Last week one of the stores had bags (at least 2 cups of basil) for MK 75 (54 cents). This was a first and I was quite excited. I also had pine nuts in the freezer from several months ago when I bought a bag for an exorbitant price but you have to buy it when you see it. Now, the missing ingredient of parmesan or anything remotely close... it was just not too be!! There are 3 grocery stores I shop at regularly and then 3-4 more that I go to for random items. There is no such thing as a one stop shop! The same shop with the basil and pine nuts also occasionally carries romano or parmesan cheeses. However, when you see them you must buy it because it will be gone in a day or 2 and there is no telling when the next shipment will arrive!! so, tonight with no virtually no other food choices and basil about to go bad I decided to improvise and use cheddar and a locally produced gouda type cheese! So we dump it all in the blender and... it won't blend!! This blender is a thorn in John's flesh everytime he thinks about it.. We paid about $35 for it and it is totally useless! It has no power to actually blend much of anything!! The one redeeming value was that it came with a grinder attachment that I used to grind coffee. Until the day that the top of the grinder disappeared. We can only deduce that Karis threw it away (a whole other issue. Mathilda has rescued shoes, cups, make up but she may have missed this one!) So now the blender is virtually useless! In the end we had to take out the pesto and chop it in to reasonably small pieces by hand!! Overall consensus: in a pinch you can use cheddar cheese for pesto although it is not ideal. It is all interesting. I never anticipated being able to buy parmesan when we moved here and truly, the availability of items is such a blessing - the lack of consistency, however, is a challenge. I try not to make my life difficult by making foods with a ton of expensive, difficult to find items but you never knwo when soemthing that has been everywhere for months ( sweetend condensed milk) will suddenly disappear!

Okay, i wrote this weeks ago and am just now finishing and posting. Last week Foodworths got a truck from South Africa - it was quite exciting! They had laundry detergent designed for front loader washers, brown sugar and parmesan all at one time! I have stocked up on the first 2 and decided the latter was just flat out too expensive!

Our First Entry

We have finally arrived in the year 2007 and figured out how to set up a blog and use it! After days of not being able to access the account, this is our first attempt to document something of our lives. This blog has been inspired by our friends Jason and Annalee, and Kyle and Amy. They have used our computer to do this "blogging" thing and we have become interested. Sara tried to start this in the Fall (Northern Hemisphere) but not having Internet at home proved to difficult.

We were able to get Internet access at home by going through some struggles.
The process started by purchasing the equipment on E-Bay in the States and having it brought over to Malawi by friends. The set-up cost here in Malawi would have cost us close to $900, thankfully we were able to do it for considerably less! Although the equipment made it here, it was not without difficulty to set up. There was a plug that was missing and an access code for the router that still has not been sent, but none the less, we have Internet at home and we are happy! The funny thing about getting Internet is that the satellite antenna(picture from our house with grain silo-has antenna on top) is visible from our home and we were assured that there would be no problem getting a great signal and great connection.

Three days, three technicians, their boss, and a small dish attached to our outside wall later we have a decent connection. It is better than nothing and again we are ecstatic!

We need to define decent apparently- we are "discussing" the definition. It is not dial up but not high speed Internet!-John. When it is at it's best I do think that our connection is comparable to a reasonable high speed connection in the U.S. However, there are many times when the system slows down (due to the number of users?) the power goes off or other various reasons and it is not nearly as fast... However, John assures me that I have just forgotten the true speed of U.S. Internet - Sara

However, one needs to keep in mind that regardless of how this speed compares to the U.S. thanks to Baylor's contract with the Internet provider this is virtually the fastest Internet available in Malawi and at a reasonable price and we are infinitely grateful.

This whole topic brings to mind an interesting caveat that anytime we use terms such as "good", "reasonable" and "decent" you should immediately add an implied "for Malawi" because everything is relative. A great example of this is last week when we took our friends, Jason and Annalee, to a local restaurant and told them it was "really good" cheesecake. John and I finished our pieces where as they each ate about 3 bites of theirs. Although we do think it is good cheesecake it is not certainly not Cheesecake Factory! This is not to imply that everything is sub par here - it is simply different. So should you read that we have "good" Internet and then come visit us expecting to be able to upload pictures with the same efficiency of high speed in the U.S. you would be disappointed.

So now you can read about these mundane happenings in our lives here in Lilongwe.