Baobab Icecream for your Fingernails

Kate figures that baobab is good for her fingernails. Well, good for the whole body really, but especially good for cuticles and nails! Sorry, you probably haven't had time to read the last blog post (about the Secret Vote) yet, and here's another one flying out! But it seemed more fun to write about baobab than do the lesson planning that I should be doing! So Kate has been pounding baobab in the pestle and mortar and soaking it ... hard work! She has made some delicious smoothies with different fruit juices. And now she has made the amazing baobab ice cream, including one with a hint of hibiscus. How delicious is that?

Kate sieves the baobab in the "cheka cheka"

It has been great having my cousin, Kate here with us for these past weeks! She has been a great help with school. She has been teaching French, and not just to the girls. She even has Ezekiel and Mendriad speaking French now; Ezekiel proudly greets us "Bonjour! Je m'appelle Ezekiel!" She has been teaching biology on "healthy bodies" (and yes, the baobab would come in useful here again!) She has been a patient and elegant model for the Tudor portraits and been a popular ICT teacher for Louisa. We are really going to miss her when she leaves us at the end of this week. She has coped remarkably with our rather chaotic, crazy life and been happy to muck in with everything!


Kate poses for portraits

This week Kate went with Andy on Monday to the village of Ihomasa where he is starting a water project. She faced her biggest challenge, being served a huge plateful of ugali and spinach! But aside from the ugali, she really enjoyed the opportunity to see the work being done with the water projects here. She was then with us all in Ikuka on Thursday. But apart from that, we have been doing quite a bit of school together in town, plus some shopping! And after being surrounded by Swahili for her first month or so here, we have been able to do some socializing in English this week! It was great to share time over a meal and games with Ben and Katy before they go to the UK to have their baby. We also had Andy and Angela round (for the infamous rabbit pie) before they head to the UK for a couple of weeks. And with two parties at the weekend, it's been quite a wazungu social whirl!

This weekend I had my third attempt at butchering a pig! A HUGE pig! So huge that it was almost impossible to get the pig into a wheelbarrow, let alone to heave it up to hang in the three! What a job! The pig belonged to the E.I. guards, and I joined Edgar (who I think could do the job himself now with the help of the laminated photos from the local Kingsclere Butcher!) for the task. So after my lovely "Full Monty" breakfast - a treat from my wonderful husband, very coincidentally bacon and egg and pork sausages, I headed over to help! Edgar and I were at the butchering table and all the cuts were passed on to Andrew who kept up with bagging, weighing and labelling it all. I have to say I find the job rather, well, maybe fun isn't quite the right word, but something like that! Is this very strange?! There is something incredibly satisfying about finding these cuts of meat in the inside of a pig and ordering it all! A mass of flesh and bone overcome. Fifty kilograms of meat cut and organized into identifiable parts. A good day's work. And good business for these guys! But definitely a muckier, smellier business than Lucy's baking!



Edgar and me with The Big Fat Pig

... by the way, the Baobab Icecream is easy to make. Just mix together 2 cups of milk with about 60g of baobab powder and 150g of sugar. We divided the mixture into two containers and added a glug of fresh hibiscus juice to one. Then just freeze. Next time we are going to try adding mango juice.
Delicious!


Baobab Icecream

And I'm curious to know ... how much does baobab powder cost for all of you my friends in other places?