Liz's meat bucket: an essential item in my Dodoma kitchen!

I often miss the convenience of shopping in the UK. Take, for example, the purchase of a piece of meat. In England, I'd pop over to the butcher to choose a clean piece of ready-prepared meat, from a wide selection, or pick up some clean, fresh, packaged meat at the supermarket.

Here in Dodoma, we wait until someone is killing an animal and then order vast quantities of raw meat straight off the pig or cow, which will then be frozen to ensure we have a good supply to last us. The animal won't actually be killed until every bit of its body has been spoken for and payment guaranteed, so the delivery date can vary.

There is also the option to go to one of the small local butcher shops in town, but so far on my visits, the butcher had run out of beef or pork fillets. The lack of fridges is also something to get used to, as meat hangs free-style around the small room.

If I were braver, I could arrange a visit to the meat market to pick out the meat I'd like, but it takes some expertise to select the good cuts -and a strong stomach to not be put off by the blood and gore and smells of freshly slaughtered beasts! So I leave this task to a kind Tanzanian lady, Elizabeti, who offers to buy meat for the less resilient of us westerners!

So when Elizabeti is going to the meat market, she comes and tells us, I put in my orders for fillet or chopped up pieces of beef or pork (or goat, if I wanted- but I've not been brave enough yet!!) and I give her my meat bucket to return the fresh meat to me once she has purchased it.

The meat returns:

Then I like to check that all is clean and hygienic, so I rinse all the meat with Milton, just to make sure, while washing out the rather blood-swilling bucket- I might get a little carried away sometimes with the use of soapy fairy liquid, trying to make sure everything is super-clean after all that raw meat!!

Then I rinse off the swimming-pool odour of Milton and chop the meat into handy freezer-bag size portions, with some moral support from Ben (who is NOT snacking here on raw meat!! I think it was a piece of apple!!):

Finally, the meat is ready for the freezer! Apparently, freezing pork for 3 months is a good way to kill off any worms, so the pork goes in for a good long while before I will defrost it for cooking.

This all takes a little longer than I was used to! My meal planning also has to be a lot more organised, as any meat dishes must first take into account the time to defrost the piece of meat I will need...