Adventures in Hummus

One 0f my medical school professors, who taught a global health course and had been all over the world, always joked that no matter how exotic a location he visited, there was only ever one question people asked when he came back: How was the food?

It's true. We're hungry hungry humans, and by golly we judge our own experiences and those of our friends by how tasty the lunches were. (The main thing patients at the University of Chicago talk about in their comment cards is how much they liked or hated their hospital food - not the nursing, or the surgeon's technique, but how over/under done their eggs were.)

So I always keep track of my culinary adventures when I'm abroad, in anticipation of conversations back home. But the truth is, I've been here nearly a week and I have no idea what Malawian food is like. The city streets are full of little rundown restaurants selling more greasy, less flavorful versions of Indian, Italian, and American food, and at home we're left to our own devices. Word on the street is that the native meal involves a lot of cassava, but I've only seen that once since arriving - on the plate of a fellow med student at the hospital canteen.

I can, however, tell you of my new found appreciation for all the cooks out there who work from primary ingredients. Take my dinner today, for example: hummus and carrots.

In Chicago, carrots and hummus for dinner involves walking to the grocery store 50 yards from my apartment, buying a bag of baby carrots and a tub of hummus (Garlic Lover's), then returning to my home to eat them in peace. My only difficulty, if any, is getting off that little plastic cover over the hummus. Sometimes it rips and comes off in two pieces. Tragedy.

In Lilongwe, hummus and carrots for dinner is actually a two-day undertaking. Getting the hummus itself ready involves:
1) walking over potholes to the local market, dodging the young men at the corner who want to chat you up;
2) discovering no one sells canned chickpeas, and opting for a huge bag of dried chickpeas instead, then waiting patiently to buy them when the power goes out in the whole indoor market and everyone waits around in pitch black for a bit;
3) taking those chickpeas home and dumping them in water to soak overnight, then draining those chickpeas the next evening to discover many tiny dead and dried bugs floating among your peas;
4) plucking the bugs out one by one, boiling the peas for an hour while mashing the tiniest garlic cloves you've ever seen and deciding that plain yogurt could pass for tahini;
5) deciding that you yourself are the "food processor" mentioned in the recipe and mashing peas with the bottom of a cup until your arm hurts; and
6) resolving that "chunky" is a perfectly good adjective for hummus and sitting down at last for dinner.

Only six short steps! Carrot procurement is not quite as involved, but involves more dodging of young men trying to sell you things and more haggling in an arena where you have no idea what things should actually cost.

So hat tip to all those ladies of old (and of current) who make much more complicated things every day for a much more demanding audience. I'll probably try a few more cooking adventures before I return home, but more likely my future meals will involve quite a bit of peel-able fruit and prepackaged crackers. Solid options.