cheese

It was a $7.50 indulgence. Not too bad by Monrovia standards but downright ridiculous by Bong County standards. I can usually cook an entire meal for three people on about $2. Of course that meal is variations of the same thing…rice, beans, and curry powder…some kind of leafy green if potato or water greens are around. Sometimes okra or cabbage. So like I said, $7.50 is ridiculous.

But I’m in a mood -all the more because my holiday plans have been altered. So when I ventured into the grocery store…again…today I picked up a small loaf of French bread (they don’t sell that at starbucks let me tell you) and some rondele’ herbed cheese. That was it.

Well, I bought some other things, spent actually quite a bit more than the $7.50 but the other stuff has method to the madness. The other stuff will sustain me back at site over the holidays when everyone is doing the family thing and the holiday thing and I’m doing the same old same old thing.

But the cheese and bread thing…that was just plain old feeding my petulant child. In south Africa at times like now I’d go to the score (the local supermarket) in my township and buy a pint of ice cold milk and a bag of M&Ms and I’d sit on the steps and eat and drink slowly like it was steak and caviar or something.

Today it was all about milk in a different form.

And it is a ridiculous amount of cheese to eat in a sitting (actually about two sittings, I’ll eat the rest with fresh pineapple for breakfast) but it was my comfort food. In the absence of my mother’s mac and cheese or my father’s chilli, in the absence of dinner at some new and amazing spot with Stephanie or thai pancakes with birdie…in that absence I sat myself down and indulged in a very simple pleasure…tomorrow it is back to Bong and beans and rocks in my rice…I’ll try to remember what the cheese tastes like as we bump and swerve our way home.