So I thought I would do a post on the more mundane aspects of Maru-a-Pula life this one being on food!
SO...
For every meal we come to the 'caf''. They have that hot oven thing to store the food in and then thats where they serve it from, the plop the food on and then you get your dessert from another dinnerlady (this is almost always fruit-changing from banana, apple, orange, nectarine and occasionally watermelon!) and then you pick up your cutlery and then sit down to eat! After you have eaten you go in the washing up area and wash up your plate, cutlery and then pop it on this massive rack to drip dry.
Breakfast is at 6.10am. There is always bread, jam, cereal (it varies from cornflakes, rice krispies and bran flakes) and then a savoury option. This varies daily from cheese, sausage, corn beef, scrambled egg, chicken and mayo. I don't usually pick the savoury option. I have the cereal and bread. The milk is rarely cold, often on the luke warm or air temp side which is never fun! There are two sort of sandwich toaster machines which students use to toast their bread in the morning.
Breaktime-9am (there is also a 10 minute break at 11am). At the first break bread, jam, peanut butter and butter is put out for the students to make a sandwich with. On Wednesdays there are ACTUAL sandwiches which they put out with either tuna or cheese in. All the teachers get sandwiches every day which we (the TAs) thought was very unfair that we didnt get sandwiches and we have finally won the right to also get sandwiches everyday so now we go collect a plate from the back of the kitchen, score! Its the little things guys ok!!
Lunch: this is at 12.45. This is busier as some day students have the caf food as well.
Dinner: this is at 6pm.
What i have noticed:
-Lunch is normally when the food is slightly better as they are serving more people. For example, dessert at dinner is 99% of the time just fruit, any time we get cake or crumble its always at lunchtime. There are meals like hot dogs and just sausage rolls and salad and this is always for dinner or at the weekend.
- They toast EVERYTHING. Some dinners are wraps with fish (weird combo i know) and people toast their wrap, they toast their bread at break, bread is often put out at dinner as well for the hungrier students so some will make a sandwich and toast it with whatever is for dinner. e.g. when its spag bol they use the meat and put that in a sandwich and toast it. When I asked the girls why everyone is so obessed with toasting they said it makes it taste better and I now completely agree. For some reason it really does! (although i dont do the spag bol sandwich, that's just weird!)
- Quite a lot of people here, and not just students as i have noticed it when we have eaten out, put SO much salt on their food. They also really love ketchup here! They put it out when we have spag bol for example
- With the meat its often very tough and with chicken its always the parts like wings, pieces with the small bones in.
- Tuck Shop-this is by the field and mostly sells unhealthy food. crisps, chips, chocolate, sweets, fizzy drinks, brownies, doughnuts, pies. There is no healthy option, trust me i have looked!
-Bean Bag Cafe-this is by the front of school and is a kiosk which sells burgers, chips etc. They also have salads but I only found out from Tamara, i have not seen a kid walk away from that kiosk with anything other than a burger/cake/chips!
View of Food:
- Alot of people here grumble about the food. Yes some meals are not that great-you could argue they are more snacks than meals but i think generally it is pretty good.
- There is one meal that i just CANNOT eat-its a traditional meal. It is setswae and samp. Setswae is similar to crispy duck. Its the same texture but it is VERY salty. Samp looks very like mash potato but do not be fooled! Its basically a variety of beans all mushed up, so think baked beans kind of half mushed up. As most of you know i hate baked beans because of the horrible texture and this is the same texture and I just cannot eat it. So i just buy food from the Bean Bag Cafe when we have it, which is about once every 2/3 weeks.
Also..
-they call satsumas here, naartjie (they all find the word satsuma here very amusing)
-some of the food to begin with i found quite spicy (which Adjoa found very funny because to her it had almost no flavour-she says at home she has chilis in everything) but now its actually ok, im getting used to it!
-ketchup here is called tomato sauce-one waitress actually had no idea what i was going on about until Tamara said tomato sauce!
What I miss:
-Cheddar cheese-the only cheese we get here is that weird almost orange plastic like cheese. I especially miss cheese when we have spag bol!
- Chicken breast/chunks of chicken-oh what i would give to eat chicken without bones in!!
- Roast dinners. I dont think i need to say anymore!
-Fruit Juice. Especially in the morning
-Indian takeaways
-good fish-fishcakes especially!
- fresh loaf of bread, not the stupid sliced bread
- ham. good old ham!
-Grapes!
NB: obviously quite a lot of this i could actually get from a supermarket but that is a lot of effort and there is limited space in the sports office fridge. Besides what am i going to do with chicken breasts?! its not like i could walk into the kitchen and just fry one up the dinner ladies would probably kill me (they can be a little scary sometimes!!)
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