Milk Powder: Love and Hate

by FERENC IVANICS
We started to consume enormous quantities of milk powder in Africa. On one hand, during our long desert walks we needed nutriments that are rich in nutrients. On the other hand, its protein/calories/price ratio is exceptional. To put it another way: we'd love to eat meat and cheese, but often we don't have the means to pay for that kind of food.



During the last months we've eaten lots of milk powder. Milk powder + sugar + water + biscuits, we were on that diet for weeks, sometimes. And believe me, on that diet one starts to feel a light break down quickly: strange stinging abdominal pain, painful defecation, dull ache in the joints. You learn to hate it. But we love it, no matter what. We have to. I think if there's no milk powder, there's nothing else that provides a chance of survival at this price level.

Cassava, Yuca, Manioc

by FERENC IVANICS
Three names in the title, but it's the same plant. And it has dozens of local names. We saw it first in Africa, most Senegalese fish dishes come with a piece of cassava. I read somewhere that in tropical regions it is a wide-spread potato substitute. Well, cassava is rich, cooked it is practically as rich as potato. Why call it a potato substitute? As far as we can tell potato could be a cassava substitute. Their flavor is so close that it's almost identical, but the texture is a bit thicker. They say it can be grown in temperate zones as well, like in Hungary.


Around the house it might raise some problems, since young plants look eerily like hemp. You better tell the neighbor first, if you are starting to grow cassava in your garden.

Bamboo Didgeridoo

by FERENC IVANICS
My brother had brought his didgeridoo and he lost it after some 6.000 miles in Houston, U.S.A. Didgeridoo is an instrument, kind of, it doesn't play tunes, rather emits a constant esoteric vibration. It was a traditional instrument of the Aboriginal people of northern Australia. Nowadays it's used by various electro, psychedelic or genre-hopping bands.


While walking in Belize we found a nice little pack of bamboo. We spent the whole afternoon cutting and carving two didgeridoos, using our cheapest Chinese knives.


Didgeridoos are magical stuff, they work only with their master, which is not surprising, since that master forms the instrument's mouthpiece to match his own mouth.


We've been adjusting our new didgeridoos for weeks and now they sound pretty fine, though we have a lot to learn and practice about playing a didgeridoo.

Watch us play on our self-made bamboo didgeridoos

Sapote

by FERENC IVANICS
We saw sapote fruits first time in Mexico. The sapote tree is nice, robust and tall, but it looks obvious that it doesn't like cold. It's really a tropical plant. We found some fruits along the way but they were unripe and hard. The fruits that fall from the trees are quickly swiped by animals.


In Belize we carried two unripe sapote fruits for three days in our backpacks. When it finally softened, we tried it. Under the skin (that looks like a hardened human skin) there's an orange-red flesh and a huge black stone. It's juicy and pulpy, faintly sweet with a scent of cinnamon. Not bad and it yields high.


There's at least a dozen different types of sapotes, the one you see on the picture is, hmm, well, one of them...

Beards

by FERENC IVANICS
Some of you might have noticed that we've been avoiding shaving. Yep, we are growing beards, we've been doing that since crossing the Mexican border on the 15th of august. We'll have a shave when leaving Chile. I assume we'll have extreme beards by that time.