Fast Food, Dar es Salaam Style

You know those nights when you don’t want to cook and really just want Taco Bell?

Yeah, me too.

But considering that replicating Taco Bell means, for me, making the tortillas, making the beans (which involves soaking overnight), making the salsa, and cooking the meat….well…it’s not exactly fast food anymore.

So when we want fast food we go to T-Square. Here’s the steps involved in our “Fast Food.”

1. Spray self with mosquito spray. Drive to T-Square, which is about a mile away.

2. Order food at window. They always say “15 minutes.”

3. Sit down with magazine and wait. Very important to bring a magazine because….

4. 45 minutes later, pick up food that is ready.

5. Normally, the French Fries are wrapped in packets of tin foil. This turns the fries into something that is as limp as a wet sock. So, I always bring my own container and ask them to put the fries in that instead of the foil. This time, as happens many times, they did use my container, but then covered the whole thing with tin foil. Sigh.

6. Bring food home to waiting family. Heat up oil on the stove and dump all the fries into oil to crisp them up.

7. Over one hour after leaving the house, serve very yummy fries, meat, rice and beans to family.

I’m sure the speed of this process practically took your breath away. But I did not have to cook it…so for me, it still counts as “Fast Food.”

Now…for the post script….I had this post all ready in my mind on the evening we ate this…which was over a week ago. But that night, a few hours after dinner, I got violently ill and had one of those miserable nights that needs no description. All night long I kept thinking “FOOD POISONING!!!” Which it could have been. But since no one else in my family got sick, and two other families we know also ate the same food that night and also didn’t get sick, and we’ve eaten there about once a month for the past 5 years and never gotten sick…well….it might not have been food poisoning. But let’s just say I have a bit of “Psychological Poisoning” against T-Square now…so it may be a while before I go on that adventure again!