Meat!

[Note: Please don't be alarmed, I'm redesigning my blog, more changes may be coming but it's still mine! - Kenny]

Today I went and spent some alone time with God at the beach. I came down with some sort of flu or bug on Thursday morning and spent about 48 hours in bed. It was nice to get off the base and sit in the sunshine for a little while again.

While in bed I enjoyed 3 wonderful books. Against All Odds by Jim Stier was about the development of YWAM in Brazil. From Pimp To Preacher by Jan Eriksen was the true life story of a Norwegian man who turned from a life on the streets to ministering to those on the streets. One of my roommates had a John Grisham book, Ford County. Not one of his best books, but John Grisham is always enjoyable in my opinion.

Some people have asked what the food is like over here, so you get a language lesson and a cuisine lesson at the same time.

The picture above is boerewors (the best pronunciation I can come up with is ''boo-er-vurs''). It means farm sausage and is made from beef with pork or lamb (or both) included occasionally. It's pretty much the main meat ingredient in everything. I found it to be an acquired taste but I enjoy it now and look forward to it really. It can be cooked numerous ways, but one of the favorite ways seems to be on the braai (rhymes with ''pry''. It means barbecue, or braaied for barbecued).

Biltong is the most famous and popular snack food in SA. Similar to droewors (''dry sausage'', literally dried boerewors) but closer to what American jerky looks like, biltong has a couple of distinct differences. First, it's much more popular than jerky is in America. It's also made differently and therefore tastes a bit different (though the end result looks similar). Biltong is dried with vinegar among other things, so the flavor and texture are different than jerky.

Biltong is popular enough that some stores specialize in carrying only biltong related merchandise (see picture to the left, the whole store looks like this!). Biltong can be cut up and added to anything from stews to muffins, chips have been made to taste like biltong, and they even have some made without any spices to give to teething babies.

On a completely unrelated topic, please don't forget about my outreach to India. I'm a couple hundred dollars closer to my halfway point, God is good! Feel free to pass my blog address along to anyone you think would be interested in reading it, the more the merrier!

Oh yes, smaak means ''taste'' or ''like''. It's okay to smaak me but don't smack me please.