Dining in Kakamega

There is always so much to write about and not always the time or the inclination. I’m not sure how much has been said so far about the food, but we have no fear of gaining weight here. Treating ourselves to a nice meal out in a restaurant just isn’t that much of a treat.

We have found a couple of favourites though – everyday we buy a few little packs of peanuts for 10 bob each. Usually if we buy four or five, the vendor will throw a little one in with a smile as a “discount”. They are fried dry with salt. I bought some raw from the market and tried to do it myself, but dry they just burnt and the salt wouldn’t stick to them. When I added a drop of oil, then they were just oily. So, we’ll stick to our guys on the street who clearly know what they are doing.

Our friend, Jeremiah who we will be going on safari with, owns the Tour Africa Cafe. So far he serves the coldest soda in town, and the best chipati w/ vegetables (fried kale, cabbage and onion). Terry feels most at home with a cup of chai as the locals enjoy it. Hot milk, always filled to the brim, a tea bag and two spoonfuls of sugar.

We’ve tried a couple of different restaurants. A couple of days ago we had most excellent service and the most disgusting food at the Stalleon Cafe. Cody saw something that looked like a simosa but was another local favourite (can’t remember the name of it). It turned out to be deep fried bread. Not sweet like a doughnut, just fried dough. Cold and not at all delicious. I tried their ugali with vegetables, and was served within minutes this brownish greenish slop posing as veggies and ugali which you can’t really screw up, but without something yummy to dip it in is tasteless. Ugali is basically mashed maize with a consistency not too dissimilar to mashed potatoes only a little stickier. Cody and Terry tried ordering something safe – chips. They too were served immediately – greasy and cold.

After our disappointing lunch, we were walking down a new street and smelled for the first time in Africa, fresh baked bread! Yummy. We passed two bread trucks and then saw a sign for a bakery. Everything in the window looked kind of familiar. Muffins (they were square shaped, not muffin shaped as we would expect, but they looked cake-like), huge cream horns, cookies, bread. Cody and Terry chose the cream horn and I went for a macaroon cookie. My cookie was… not like a macaroon in any way, but it wasn’t offensive. Terry and Cody bit into their dreamy looking cream horns with much anticipation, followed by much disappointment. I asked Cody what he thought and he said, “It’s not really what you expect.” The cream horns came to a sad demise in the ditch.

The fruit is good – pineapples, papayas, mangos, oranges (a little more sour than we are used to, but still yummy), and bananas. We love the little bananas the best. They are about the size of a man’s thumb and sweet and firm. We’ve also found good cucumbers, tomatoes, bitter green peppers that are good fried, eggplant and sweet carrots. I wash everything in a drop of bleach and boiled water and so far so good in the tummy department.

Cody is brave and will try anything… even the orange kool-aid we were served at the fish farm (he said it tastes like jello). He’s had goat and chicken. Terry did show him the butchery with zero refrigeration, flies and blood stained wooden stumps for cutting blocks. He’s still not dissuaded. Yesterday it was a bacon sandwich (fried bread shaped like a simosa with bacon, nothing else). He is missing ketchup as they have something quite gelatine like here called tomato sauce. Everything goes down o.k. with their only other condiment – chilli sauce.