Foraging for food, as you know, is my main job here. I've been feeling pretty smug the past few weeks, as I felt like I'd gotten a system down, and getting what we needed wasn't too tough. As usual, as soon as I start patting myself on the back - it all goes downhill! Last night I started making a new recipe for dinner, only to discover partway through that I didn't have enough sour cream. I called JoAnn, to see if she had some - she was out, too. We brainstormed, and came up with the plan to send my driver to the store to get some. Now - let me pause for a moment here to explain the sour cream situation in Angola. I think I lived here for almost 3 full months before I saw sour cream for sale, so it's a hot commodity. When you can find it, it's only in ONE shop in town, and it's $6 for roughly 8 oz. But we'd seen it in the store just a few days prior, so I was fairly confident that Paolo could find it. I sent him to the store with the $ and an empty container of the prized sour cream, so there would be no misunderstanding what I needed. Half an hour later, Paolo returned empty-handed. No sour cream, madame.
Our dinner was okay, I managed to wing it and make do with what I had....but it was a little reminder of how essential it is to plan ahead. It's a pain in the rear in the US if one store happens to be out of the BRAND of sour cream you want - can you imagine not being able to get any in the entire town?
Cat tongue crackers, however, are no problem to find.
No comments:
Post a Comment