How to Survive Village with a Sweet Tooth

My love for sugar has apparently been with me from the beginning- my mom always says my first word was "cookie". Having such a strong sweet tooth in Burkina isn't ideal, you're left with unsatisfied cravings when the only possible fixes are mangoes for two months out of the year and super mediocre cookies. 

When I first arrived in Burkina, an older PCV was listing the things he does in his free time and I was shocked to hear him casually mention he's gotten into making pies. Pies?! In village?! How??? But also intrigued to know he made it sound so feasible, it gave me hope... maybe I could figure it out too? 

And I did- and it is so simple. What we use is a dutch oven, a medium size marmite (is marmite an English word? there are some words I forget if I knew before... well marmite is like a cauldron). You put the marmite on top of the stove- our stoves are like a larger camping stove hooked up to a propane tank. 

                                       

Then you place a small pile of sand inside with three small tomato paste cans on top. Before it is used the first time, the sand has to be cooked/burned, otherwise the food made will have an earthy/dirt flavor. 

                             

This is one of my main stores in Kossouka and Rasmane who owns it. Its set up like a general store where I tell him what I want and he stands behind the counter and gets it for me. 

One thing that I hadn't wondered whether/how it would be different is purchasing certain foods. Flour is kept in rice sacks and is paid by kilo. 

Sugar is bought in these clear bags with varying sizes. Vanilla extract was a hard thing to find at first; to get vanilla flavor we actually use little sugar packets that have vanilla flavor infused, instead of a heavily flavored liquid. 

All PCVs in Burkina receive this cookbook. It is basic how tos (like how to make a dutch oven or dry fruit) and recipes contributed by other volunteers over the years. I used to read it during stage/training when living with my host family, just imagining and craving all the food I was going to make for myself once I got the freedom to cook my own food again. 

Since the flour is stored in rice sacks, it has to be sifted before being used to make sure no bugs are in it. For awhile I would do it but never found anything, so I started skipping this step thinking it was a waste of time... which I kept thinking until my birthday this year. I made a chocolate cake at night with little lighting and didn't think anything of skipping the sifting step. My friends and I ate the whole cake for dessert and breakfast the next day. It wasn't till a couple days later when a friend and I were making pancakes, and I opened the tin can I keep the flour in and saw it FILLED with these tiny bugs and eggs and what not. I was embarrassed I had used that flour to make a cake for my friends but no one noticed, so couldn't have been too bad. My friend though was disgusted I was still willing to use the flour for pancakes. And its moments like that that make me realize how low our standards get: getting to eat pancakes with funky flour was so worth not eating any pancakes at all (which we ended up making and were delicious with peanut butter being the substitute for syrup). 

The cookbook's vegan chocolate cake recipe is SO good, instead of eggs we use vinegar. It's so good that during hot season I often just quarter the recipe and eat the batter like its pudding.

And then after about 20 minutes in the dutch oven, voila! A super moist, delicious, bug optional chocolate cake! 

                           

Sometimes just making the batter alone will satisfy my craving and I really shouldn't eat a whole cake by myself, so I like to bake when I have reason. 

A bunny birthday cake for my best friend's son's 2nd birthday! 

My neighbor came over for Valentines Day, she brought the nicest Burkina box wine and I experimented with powder sugar writing 

The chocolate cake recipe is by far my favorite thing to make in Kossouka. Though the cookie recipes and apple crumb cakes are delicious too. 

Apples are sold at my bus station when returning to site. I buy them thinking they'll be a refreshing, healthy snack, yet I'm pretty sure every time I end up turning them into this apple crumb cake.

Christmas cookies! Oatmeal peanut butter cookies and sugar cookies with chocolate cookies given to friends in Kossouka

So for any future PCVs with a sweet tooth, it'll be fine! Set up a dutch oven, use 1 tbs of vinegar per egg if you don't have eggs easily accessible, and baking sweets will make rainy days even more cozy, be a delicious way to meet Goal 2 (sharing American culture with our host countries), and, when projects go wrong, baking will be something you can control that comforts you and makes a frustrating day easier to accept.