Food

Me and Mirinda

First off, I brought way too much food. There is plenty of food in Ethiopia (for tourists, anyway) and we were never hungry. There were days where I felt like we were eating every ten minutes. I brought one granola bar for each of us each for each day and one baggie of trail mix for each us for each day. I also brought crackers and small peanut butter cups and some of those tuna fish and cracker packs. The hole trip I think we each ate 3 granola bars and maybe 2 baggies of trail mix. We never ate our peanut butter and crackers and one day for lunch we ate our tuna fish stuff, which was by choice.

I remember Oprah saying once she had just been to Africa and eaten a lot of bread and potatoes. What I didn't realize when she said that is that when you eliminate all the food that can potentially make you sick, what you are left with is bread and potatoes. I have a very sensitive stomach and I was terrified of getting sick, so I was very careful. I ate bread, potatoes, rice, and sometimes spaghetti with tomato sauce. I ate french fries for several meals. The french fries at the hotel were very good. (If you get them via room service, remember to ask them to bring you salt and ketchup.) At the hotel there was also a dish called chicken stir fry that had a tiny bit of chicken, rice, spaghetti noodles, and cooked vegetables. It is good and I ate that a couple times. For the most part, all the food we ate tasted good, usually lacking in salt, but you can add that. Another thing I didn't realize is that if all you eat for days on end in bread and potatoes, you start to feel yucky. I am not a huge meat eater, but by the last day, I broke down and ate steak with mushroom sauce at ShangriLa. This is the only time in the entire trip that I ate something so risky. It was very good and I didn't get sick! I ate no dairy, very little meat, almost no fruit and a few cooked vegetables here and there. They do have these small bananas and I probably had 3 or 4 of them while we were there. If they were available at breakfast, I ate them. I didn't eat butter or any sauces. (I did eat tomato sauce on spaghetti, but I am sure this came out of a can, and ketchup out of a bottle.) I would bring some jerky, for a source of protein and some vitamins if you are as paranoid as I am. I have to say, Boyd was not nearly as careful as I was and he did not get sick, however, he "has a cast iron stomach," so he says.

There isn't any comfort food in Ethiopia. There is not a single McDonald's in the entire country. There is also no dessert. For dessert at restaurants there is fruit or cream caramel. Cream caramel is...uh...not yummy, let's say. The closest thing I can compare it to is flan, but without the sugar. I brought a big bag of M&Ms and am glad I did. I bought a Twix for each of us at the supermarket and they were $1.60 each. Bring some treats!

You can get bottled water nearly everywhere and it is cheap. We mostly got ours from the bar at the hotel.

One great thing they do have is Mirinda. I had several everyday. It is like Orange Crush only better and it comes in a bottle. (I always tried to avoid drinking out of cups.) I have never drank so much soda in my life!