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Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Tchadian Flashback

I am back to Uruguay now. That's where I live, despite my 6 months of traveling last year. I had to find a new apartment, because obviously there was no way I was going to pay rent for 6 months without actually being here.

But I did. I found a great place and I'm super happy about it. Hopefully I'll be able to stay here until I can buy my own place.

Moving sometimes is complicated though, and this time had its ups and downs. Today was the first day I really felt like I lived here, and I went to the grocery store and bought all the things I needed to stock up the cupboards and the fridge. Then I thought I'd make myself a nice little dinner. And I remembered something...

Back in September, a friend of mine took me to a restaurant in Tchad, to eat chicken. That's all they had,  rotisserie chicken. Which you eat with your hands. And they give you a metal tray, like cafeteria tray, with a bit of bread, a bit of salad, and some spices. You're supposed to dip the chicken on the spices and eat it.

I had one bite, and I was hooked. It was fantastic!! Not the chicken, the spices! Well, both. I had to know what that was. I asked, but the guy who knew what it was wasn't there, so I came back a few days later and asked him. He told me it was a mixture of several things that he made himself.... I was a bit disappointed, I had hoped it was something I could just buy and take home. He said: "Wait here. I'll be back!"

I waited for maybe 15 minutes, until he came back with a ton of little packages full of different spices. He dropped them all on a table, then started picking up one by one,  smelling it, and telling me what it was, while I wrote it down.




Then he opened them and mixed a bit of this, a bit of that, all in front of me, showing me how to do it. And if all of that wasn't enough, at the end, he put the entire mixture into a little plastic bag and handed it to me.


 Incredible!!! And so nice! And delicious!

So today, when I thought about cooking, I remembered those spices, brought all the way from Tchad. And my food tasted like a little bit of Tchad.


I miss it....