Impala Steak anyone?

At the moment I am surviving on mass catered food courtesy of the Navy.  It is not that bad, but I am getting a bit bored of knowing what I am going to get as the chef's special each day of the week - it has not changed over the past three years.  It was scampi tonight.  And the lack of really fresh food is making my body revolt against it all.  What I am missing is some fresh African cooked food.

There is something special about the food that is cooked in Africa, it is fresh (probably picked, dug up or killed that morning), it is untainted from additives and pesticides and it always tastes better when you eat it outside. Fresh fruit and vegetables are available all year round, where they have not been processed, injected, shaped, sprayed, packaged, moulded or battered into what we are told that we like to eat.  Instead, the fruit and vegetables come as they are, malformed, distorted, bobbly, non-conformist and pure and free of chemicals, you can certainly taste the difference in the misshappen African tomatoes to the perfectly formed, force ripened ones in the UK.  My mouth is watering at the thought of it all.

But for me, the best thing is the choice of fresh meat - beef, lamb, impala (roasting in the picture - can you smell it?), warthog, kudu, crocodile, bushbuck, the list goes on.  The meat is often fresh that day and the flavour is an assault on your taste buds.  I suspect that it is all helped with the atmosphere; dining on decking, over looking a hippo or elephant watering hole, with the sound of the African bush in chorus around you and the African sky towering above, you can not help being sucked into romantic notions whilst you dine with everything tasting absolutely wonderful.  And it is not just the dining experience that is memorable, it is also the the knowledge that it will all happen all over again tomorrow.  It is a healthy eating with a healthy lifestyle.

Not so looking forward to the chef's special tomorrow now, it is mince.