Lettuce - 3990
2 tomatoes - 1767
Cucumber - 417
2 tomatoes - 1767
Cucumber - 417
Total - 6174 cfa ($12)
**not including salad dressing or onion previously bought**
**not including salad dressing or onion previously bought**
Soaking the veggies in a vinegar & bottled water bath.
Any produce you buy here that you plan on eating raw must be disinfected because there are all sorts of nasty bugs, parasites and bacteria that love to take over your stomach and make you violently ill for days on end. (Sounds fun doesn't it?) So once you pay an arm and a leg for it and get it home you rinse all the dirt & sand off in the sink. Then you fill a bowl full of vinegar and bottled water in which you must soak the produce in for 20 or so minutes. Afterwards, you rinse the produce off with another bottle of water to get rid of any lingering yuckiness and the vinegar. You dry it off and then can prepare the salad. It takes forever and hardly ever seems worth it for a very basic salad with mediocre produce.
Said salad.
Occasionally I dream about a nice spinach salad with strawberries, red onion, craisins, seeds and a raspberry vinaigrette dressing. Actually, funny enough, salads are one of the first things we order when we leave Gabon - that and a good latte. Oh, and a steak too!
I love your blog! I'm doing this right now! Can't wait until our housekeeper is full time. I get frustrated with how the simplest of tasks can take double the time double the steps.
ReplyDeleteI remember when I was in Senegal about a week into our stay me and the other Canadian started really craving veggies. We went out exploring one day with the cousin of the family we were staying with and stopped for lunch. We ordered mains and a large salad to share. We offered it to him but he refused to even try it! He said that he didn't want to try it as it might make him sick, it was so weird. But I get it, it wouldn't be in his regular diet and makes sense as the cost is so high.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny - I think most people worry about eating meat when they're in a shady place but anything that isn't going to be cooked is most likely to make you sick. I avoided salads for the first few months of living here but then you have to get over it and give it a whirl. I've had several tummy problems and one bout of food poisoning but I'm still standing ;)
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