GUTEKA- to cook!

I feel in one of my earlier blog entires I was a bit negative on the food issue. I would like to tell you the wonderful foods that have been derived from the ingredients we have been able to find in Rwanda. But first a little about Rwandan cooking. There are 5 standard dishes and thats it. Rwandans never branch out and try different concoctions, its always the same. Plantins (a cross between a potato and a bananna; Ibishyimbo na umuceri (rice and beans); mashed potatos; ifiritis (french fries); dodo (greens similar to spinish); carrots, peas and green beans; umugati (cassava flour bread, very bland, hearthy taste but not bad); especial (omlette). As americans though we discovered with a little effort that many american dishes can be made here. 1: Hmaburgers, i did little in the preperation of this but my house mates spent hours grinding the meat with a terrible meat grinder. Then the ground beef was formed into hot dog shaped burgers since that is the shape of the buns here and cooked over a coal fire. They were delicious. we added avocado and tomatoes and cheese to them. Then with the French fries i learned a cool new trick and that is to always double fri. The following weekend we made macaroni and cheese starting with a rue of butter and flour then adding cheese. It was also incredible the garlic was an amazing touch to that dish. It funny because I have a roommate who can find anything in this country. Snickers and kit kats have recently been discovered, not sure if they were specially ordered from Kigali because of the group of 36 muzungu's staying in the area or not. Anyway she saw a white man and followed him and what did she find, she found French baguettes. so now on numerous occasions we have had grilled cheese on real French baguettes. To make it a little better, avocado and tomatoes are a great touch. Guacamole is another favorite especially since we don't need to spend an hour prepping a fire in order to make it. Avocado's are huge here and you can get 1 for 10 cents. Interestingly enough guacamole is not a Rwandan dish and Rwandans don't really know about it. It is definitely popular with the peace corps volunteers though. So I think i can safely say I will not be wasting away of starvation any time soon. (of course packages with american food are definitely still wanted :)