These are a few of our favourite... foods?

One of my favorite things to do when i'm in a new city is to visit the grocery store. I love to see all the different products and foods and take my time wandering up and down the aisles. So I thought i'd write a post showcasing some of our everyday products that we use here (just in case this is one of your favorite things to do too!).

One of our motto's here is to buy as much local Malawian product as possible- so we really do our best to steer away from imports from South Africa (but we did have to buy the imported coffee maker!). It's actually very important that we buy local because Malawi has a major Forex shortage. This basically means that they do not have enough foreign currency stock (i.e US dollars) to import goods because they don't export enough. So this causes a whole bunch of problems (including contributing to the fuel shortage crisis because they can't buy fuel from neighboring countries). So we don't want to contribute to this situation and we enjoy supporting the local farmers.

Anyways, so here in Zomba we have two small grocery stores that we frequent ('Shoprite' and 'Metro cash n'carry') and then of course the local market.

Here are some of our everyday products:

Must begin with the coffee! This is from Mzuzu in northern Malawi.
People here say that coffee is quite healthy for you!

'Sobo' our drink of choice :) 1 part Sobo 4 parts water.
My favorite is passion flavoured.. and Josh, his is orange,
but the orange tastes like the orange juice you used to
get at MacDonalds as a little kid.. ick!

Salt from the nearby city of Blantyre

Lemon creams- my cookie of choice!
This was my first comfort food here in Zomba.
 I can't even tell you how many packages of these I have eaten!
The price is K120 for 2 (about 75 cents)

Chombe Tea is the #1 Malawian Tea-
there are many tea estates just outside of Zomba.
Apparently this is a must see for us before we leave.

The milk here. It comes in these small plastic packages
 and it is not refrigerated before you open it. I always found that a bit odd..

Well, they are magic.. magically delicious.
These orange 'Puffs' are like Cheetos but round,
and as you can see ridiculously addicting..

The Malawian version of a kit-kat,and I might add, quite delicious!

Pineapples from the market- so yummy!

Lychees! A favorite snack. We get 4 dozen for K500 (3 US dollars)

Cooking Oil from Blantyre

Malawian Rice- the packaging is so colorful!

Candles from Blantyre- much needed as we experience daily blackouts. 

Local eggs- I have seen women carrying these flats on their heads!

Beans from the market. Josh is known at the market
as "black bean" guy because he apparently buys so much.

And just for effect- the butter (although this is not Malawian)..
affectionately known as fat spread.. hmm.