And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time

To make the run up to Christmas a little more festive, Stebba and I have taken to baking and eating Christmas treats. The only problem being that Maganja da Costa doesn’t offer much in the field of gastronomy, and due to the lack of ovens, everything has to be fried or boiled. Lots of the ingredients also have to be bought in Quelimane.

However, after putting our heads together, getting those creative juices flowing, we have come up with some delicious, and not particularly healthy things to cheer us up after a long day trying to build a house. Feel free to try them out.

Pancakes
Bananas fried in condensed milk (good in the pancakes or with kitkat crumbled over the top)
Chocolate/oat/coconut truffles
Frozen bananas covered in chocolate and cashew nuts/coconut
Packet chocolate pudding with banana and coconut

Things we are planning on making
Pina Colada
Mango Sorbet
Pineapple Ice
Icelandic Christmas Rice Pudding

We’ve also made an advent wreath, which was completely dead after a couple of hours. To make it vaguely resemble holly, Stebba painted some beans (and her hands) red and stuck them on. Unfortunately I can't load photos on at the moment, but come back another time and you'll see lovely pictures of us lighting the advent wreath each sunday.

Tomorrow we are heading back to Maganja. The internet connection has been awful, and consequently the blogs are not at the standard we had hoped. We have lots of great photos, but we'll have to load them up after New Year. We aren't planning on coming back to Quelimane for quite some time. After Christmas we are heading to the beach at Pebane for New Years to get rid of our workers tans and eat lots and lots of prawns. In early January we are going up north to Nampula to buy capulanas for the project and more beach and sight-seeing at Ilha de Mocambique.

We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas holiday. Think of me and Stebba, in our beautiful new house, singing Band Aid's 'Do they know it's Christmas?', trying to make Christmas dinner on a coal fire and trying to feel festive in 40 degree heat.

And in case you were wondering, yes, they do know it's Christmas. And it does snow in some places. And things do grow. And there's a lot of rain too. Bob Geldolf and Midge Ure should have done some research.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year