House Girl Diaries

Just to prove that we can be gender equal even in Africa, here's the result of one of my tasks on Saturday:















This was our fruit and veg haul after I had cleaned it in tap water; sterilised it in Ansi, and rinsed it in filtered water.

For those fiscally minded people among you, the cost of this list of shopping was:

3kg potatoes - 1,000 Tanzanian Shillings (Tsh) [= c. £0.50]
Root ginger (a lot!) - 400 Tsh [= c. £0.20]
11 tangerines - 1,000 Tsh (Note - for some unknown reason, these are green in Tanzania!)
5 bananas - 300 Tsh [= c. £0.15]
5 onions, red - 350 Tsh [= c. £0.18]
1 garlic - 200 Tsh [= c. £0.10]
5 mangos - 1,500 Tsh [= c. £0.75]
1kg tomatoes - 1,000 Tsh [= c. £0.50]

Total cost (after adding in the 5 kg of rice for 5,000 Tsh [£2.50] and the 2kg beans for 1,600 Tsh [£0.80] = £6.18.

That's how much things from the market cost. Things from the supermarket are considerably more expensive.

I then spent most of the afternoon peeling and slicing most of the potatoes into little packets of chips to put in the freezer - to be 'fast-ish food', later on.

It might be taking my desire not to throw things away a step too far, but I then made 'potato-peel crisps' out of the peelings. These were fairly nice immediately after cooking, but deteriorated rather after than. Once salted, and used as a dip condiment they were pretty reasonable. And such economy!

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Note: I was much impressed by Libby today, who borrowed a friend's car and drove to the supermarket all by herself. Given how happy she was to drive anywhere in the UK [not much], this has to be the cause for considerable kudos! The 'car' was also a 4WD Toyota Land Cruiser Prado - which is about three times the size of anything she's ever driven before.